Regarding billionaires/multi-millionaires who slave countless hours each day - my experience is that in the main, it's because they're people who genuinely like what they're doing, they're really driven people, or they're people who don't know what else to do with themselves. I have known some who cashed out stock options, left with great fanfare, played golf (or the equivalent) for six months, then came back to work because they were bored stiff. I've known fewer still who were really "grounded" and had goals and a well-rounded life apart from their careers.
And yes, as you say, there are also those who've fallen into the trap of not ever being satisfied with the level of wealth they have. I've seen many people fall into the "millionaire lifestyle", sort of brainlessly buying a more expensive house and cars simply because that's their idea of what millionaires do. Unfortunately, that kind of behavior can become a kind of treadmill in and of itself.
As others have observed, I have no desire to be entirely free of work. Interesting work is a blessing. However, the advantage of having a stash of money is that one has more choices about one's work, both the nature of it and how hard one works at it. When one doesn't have to work for financial reasons, work can become more fulfilling and fun.
What the graph is saying is that you can never get to that point because there are not enough people on the earth. YOUR downline will never look like that.
What the graph is saying is that you can never get to that point because there are not enough people on the earth. YOUR downline will never look like that.
What the graph is saying is that you can never get to that point because there are not enough people on the earth. YOUR downline will never look like that.
I would love to retire early! That is my goal. I think for a lot of people they just wait to win the lottery and never do anything to get there themselves.
I think it's better to get rich slowly (over 10-30 years) then to hope for a 1 in 1,000,000 chance (or less) that you will win money.
Some other reasons people don't "get there" are lack of drive, confidence and focus. It's so much easier to just give up if you don't see immediate results, especially if you don't have confidence in yourself.
Off the top of my head I can think of three things to facilitate relocation.
Multiple streams of income and a freelance lifestyle keep you from being stuck in one place.
Living below your means - specifically, buying less house than you can afford - allows you many more options when considering lifestyle changes.
For example, if you own less house than you can afford, and are at least several years into a mortgage, it's likely you have the option of relocating AND keeping your home. Since your mortgage payment is based on a historical purchase price of X years ago, and rents are based on current prices, you can probably generate a positive cashflow by renting it out. If you relocate to a distant area, just have a good property manager handle the details and send you checks. Of course, you could just sell the house and use the equity to buy another one, or start a business, etc. The important thing is that you have many options.
I loved getting lemons with my water at restaurants, it was one of those things that made being frugal somewhat worth it. A little lemon, and a little bit of sweet and low in the water just to give it a kick. A seemingly better substitute that soda. Plus, water is usually free.
My new awareness of the bacteria levels of lemon now make me wonder if there is even bacteria in the tap water they give us?
i agree that retiring early is wonderful, i did it myself. one thing i caution you about though is having a plan. i assume you do because you sound like you have your stuff together, but believe me if you don't there will be problems. retirement is not like a vacation, it is a lifestyle. you are young. your friends are not retired. the other retired people are older. just a few things to think about. good luck!!!
You bring up a valid point, and one that we have researched. We do include bones of some sort with each meat serving, along with egg shells with any egg serving. They get cooked right along with the rest of the food. I also know that if you cook the meat right on the bone, a fair amount of calcium, usually from marrow, will cook right into the rest of the meal.
I know that there has always been discussion about a RAW diet vs. cooked recipes. We have had great results with the cooked diet. I have heard that you should add some bone meal to your pup's diet, and I know that this can be purchased as a supplemental additive.
Just as human diets have changed over the years (raw vs. cooked), domesticated dogs and cats have seen the same. I'm not entirely convinced that raw materials would be as beneficial for todays puggles, golden doodles, and scnhoodles as it was for their wild ancestors. This doesn't mean that it won't be good for them, or they won't enjoy it, but I personally don't eat raw. I also don't know where the raw foods on the supply chain are coming from. Homemade dog food came largely in response to fears of contimination. Serving raw meats won't do anything to ease the fears of pet owners.
It's good to hear that you did well on the raw meat diet for your pups, and I still recommend some form of calcium. Even our chickens get that in their diets!
From a practical standpoint, gratitude can help bring focus on what is important so that you can nurture those relationships, guard your health, maintain that home or car or boat, watch over those investments.
This is the LAST blog in which I would expect to find a flame war. I subscribe to WiseBread because it's real people offering real solutions to real problems. I want to hear about ways to make my tiny budget go farther, not listen to fanboys wow the masses with their effortless spouting of Apple specs.
I think the post is better suited for a place like The Consumerist, which gives voice to the myriad ways in which we get screwed by The Man.
The internet is full of tiny little soapboxes, each giving voice to some blogger's list of injustices. I don't read those. I read WiseBread. I check my Google Reader each morning, eagerly opening each post full of DIY ideas to make my life healthier and happier. Let's keep it that way!
I never want to retire! I'm going to work until I keel over. I would say that one big obstacle to retiring at 35 is that you need to fund not the usual 20 years or so of retirement, but forty or FIFTY! That's a pretty big nest egg. It means you have to accumulate enough wealth to live off the interest only--forever. For ten years, it's a challenge!
I will say the smartest thing I did financially in my twenties was to buy a house. We made a great deal of money from the equity in the house, and banked much of it when we traded up to a larger place.
I've been thinking about this post for a week. I think you're right most of the time. A lot of good (or bad) "luck" is really just good (or bad) planning. On the other hand, there are some things that are truly just lucky or unlucky. They can be mitigated or exacerbated due to planning, but things just sometimes happen.
One of the biggest things we have absolutely no control over, but which establishes so much of our lives, is when, where, and to whom we're born. I can pretty much guarantee that anyone reading this blog was exceptionally lucky in the "birth" lottery -- we're all well enough off to have regular access to a computer, which means we're probably also all well enough off to live in a free country, have enough food, read and write arguably one of the most important languages on the planet (English)... none of these things are a given. In most times and places throughout history, this situation is not the norm. So we are all exceptionally lucky.
But when most people talk about "luck," they're talking about stuff that happens to them. This, too, has some element of chance in it. Bad "luck" is when someone in your apartment complex leaves the stove on by accident and there's a fire that destroys your apartment. Good planning can mitigate this (you have copies of your important documents in safe places, you have renter's insurance, you have family nearby to stay with), but it's still fundamentally bad luck that no amount of planning on your part could have changed.
There are also "good" luck things that you have no control over. You might be in line for the movies and find out you're the 100,000th customer and they're giving you a year's pass. Yay! That's just an example of great luck.
On the whole, I agree with you. I just think the issue's a little more complex than you make it out to be.
I don't understand how you can consider yourself a Mac junkie if you never upgraded to Tiger. Your situation is the equivalent of buying a DVD and expecting it to work in your VHS player. At least Apple's not asking you to upgrade to Blu-Ray (Leopard, in this case).
Your analogies don't work, BTW...if you had a classic car you would have to hunt around for the right tires. And this is the equivalent of retrofitting a new ice and water dispenser into an older refrigerator, not putting new food into one (that would be software).
Finally, if you want an iPod that you can download music to wirelessly, without a computer, get an iPod Touch.
What does the economic package mean for taxpayers that had already paid their taxes? Will we get any of the money? or Will we have to wait until next year?
Lindsey--if you are going to feed a home made diet to your dog, you should understand phosphorous-calcium balance. Here's a web site that takes a pretty critical look at home-made diets for pets: http://www.caberfeidh.com/NaturalDiet.htm
The money quote is here: "The common practice of feeding meat without bones (or bone meal) is nutritionally disastrous for dogs and cats. The correct proportion of meat to bones or bone meal is also poorly understood by many people, and their reliance on recommendations made by people who themselves don't know what they are doing makes the problem worse."
Personally, I am very supportive of home-made raw diets. You just need to make sure that your dog's diet contains adequate quantities of bone or bone meal to balance the meat. My understanding that a diet high in meat and low in calcium will leech calcium out of the dog's bones and could cause rickets or other permanent bone malformities.
I did a raw, home-made diet for about six years with my last dog, and she enjoyed excellent health and a long life. We didn't bother much with veggies, just gave her raw meaty bones, uncooked. She loved them. I would like to feed my current dogs the same way, but their consumption was 3-4 times each what the old dog was eating and it was putting us in the poor house. It is getting harder all the time to find waste meats or meat products, as the pet food industry takes them out of the food chain to make pet food to sell to us. With the rising cost of meat, I could hardly find anything that was less than $2/pound, and my dogs were going through 3-4 pounds per day each. *sigh* They loved it while it lasted, though. I think it is hard to save money with home made diets, but I enjoy sticking it tothe pet food industry. After all, we domesticated dogs for 10,000 years without Purina.
washed the lemons that we put in the drinks when I worked at restaurants. Or at least I did. But if you think the lemons are gross from a restaurant, you would freak if you saw the stuff we were supposed to put into drinks behind the bar. My bartending days saw the same 5 olives sitting out on the counter night after night (only being covered and put away overnight) for almost 2 months! If I was making drinks, I'd just fish some fresh ones out of the jar (with a utensil, of course), or tell my friends NEVER to order a martini.....
I am such a crock pot girl. So much so, it's of note and a source of amusement for many who know me. So for the life of me, I don't know why I didn't think of it before either.
Guess it just shows the value of an extra mind in the group to help problem solve. This has really motivated me to tackle this. I thought I had gone the extra mile in making the eco treats form the Eco Dog book I reviewed, but was honestly still strying to figure out where on Earth I was going to find the time and energy to do food on a regular basis.
Now, I just have to find my super affordable protein source. While I grew up in a hunting household, my husband and I just don't for whatever reason. I'm wondering if an affordable cut supplemented by peanut butter and perhaps flaxseed oil? Just as a way to stretch out the meat?
We've been making our dog's food for a few years, but it has never occurred to me to use the slow-cooker. Thanks for this tip! This will make our lives even easier.
After trying a dozen different ways to make food, my hubby just got lazy (and genious) and threw everything in the slowcooker over night. My pup loves it, and clean up is a breeze!
You know, your timing on this piece couldn't be better. Crockpots are right up my alley, and whatever we choose as we try to make the transition to the homemade food, it has to be EASY. For more than reasons than normal, we are short on time this year.
I also like that you provided a system that is easily interchangeable. As usual, you've kept my budget in mind.
This reminds me of a short quote I read which caused me to think about my attitude toward life. I'm sorry I don't know who said it.
"Pessimists are more often right, but optimists
are more often happy."
Honestly, I don't even know if it's true that pessimists are correct in their assumptions more often than optimists, but for me, the point was well taken. Who cares about being right all the time if you are miserable? Who wants to hang out with, or be there for a gloom and doom prophet? Clearly I'm not advocating a "cheerful ostrich" kind of attitude towards life, we need to be realistic, but beyond that, we can choose what we focus our attention on and be grateful for what we have.
The words "fecal bacteria" get a big rise out of people, but they're just talking about e. coli. No, it's not a great thing to have in your food, but the stuff is everywhere. It floats around in the air. At one point, there was a big deal about putting your toothbrush in a cabinet or something, because supposedly it would get fecal bacteria on it from the toilet flushing. I think it was on Mythbusters were they found that just as much "fecal bacteria" ended up on toothbrushes stored in the kitchen. Unless you're immune-compromised, it's nothing to worry about excessively. My mom was told not to eat any raw fruits or veggies at all while on chemo, because they all have potentially dangerous bacteria on them, if you have no immune system.
My guess for the high bacteria count is that no one thinks to wash lemons before slicing them. I know I don't. But we probably should if we are going to throw it, skin and all, into a drink.
Restaurant workers use their bare hands to prepare lots of other foods, and I use mine to prepare food at home, so I'm not worried about that. I'd much rather assume (hope) that they are washing up frequently.
I'm not sure of the exact amount, but I'm pretty confident that Denmark spends next to nothing on national defense. Why? Because the United States, through NATO, is protecting Denmark's borders.
If Denmark would "man up" and defend itself, it wouldn't have the luxury of subsidizing health care, unemployment wages, free college education, etc. Or if it maintained those services and had to form a legitimate military, the tax rates would drive anyone who makes a decent living somewhere else -- like the U.S.
Denmark is like The Shire -- everyone outside the borders is doing all of the hard work so the hobbits can live a life of peace and quiet.
Regarding billionaires/multi-millionaires who slave countless hours each day - my experience is that in the main, it's because they're people who genuinely like what they're doing, they're really driven people, or they're people who don't know what else to do with themselves. I have known some who cashed out stock options, left with great fanfare, played golf (or the equivalent) for six months, then came back to work because they were bored stiff. I've known fewer still who were really "grounded" and had goals and a well-rounded life apart from their careers.
And yes, as you say, there are also those who've fallen into the trap of not ever being satisfied with the level of wealth they have. I've seen many people fall into the "millionaire lifestyle", sort of brainlessly buying a more expensive house and cars simply because that's their idea of what millionaires do. Unfortunately, that kind of behavior can become a kind of treadmill in and of itself.
As others have observed, I have no desire to be entirely free of work. Interesting work is a blessing. However, the advantage of having a stash of money is that one has more choices about one's work, both the nature of it and how hard one works at it. When one doesn't have to work for financial reasons, work can become more fulfilling and fun.
What the graph is saying is that you can never get to that point because there are not enough people on the earth. YOUR downline will never look like that.
What the graph is saying is that you can never get to that point because there are not enough people on the earth. YOUR downline will never look like that.
What the graph is saying is that you can never get to that point because there are not enough people on the earth. YOUR downline will never look like that.
I would love to retire early! That is my goal. I think for a lot of people they just wait to win the lottery and never do anything to get there themselves.
I think it's better to get rich slowly (over 10-30 years) then to hope for a 1 in 1,000,000 chance (or less) that you will win money.
Some other reasons people don't "get there" are lack of drive, confidence and focus. It's so much easier to just give up if you don't see immediate results, especially if you don't have confidence in yourself.
Off the top of my head I can think of three things to facilitate relocation.
Multiple streams of income and a freelance lifestyle keep you from being stuck in one place.
Living below your means - specifically, buying less house than you can afford - allows you many more options when considering lifestyle changes.
For example, if you own less house than you can afford, and are at least several years into a mortgage, it's likely you have the option of relocating AND keeping your home. Since your mortgage payment is based on a historical purchase price of X years ago, and rents are based on current prices, you can probably generate a positive cashflow by renting it out. If you relocate to a distant area, just have a good property manager handle the details and send you checks. Of course, you could just sell the house and use the equity to buy another one, or start a business, etc. The important thing is that you have many options.
That's so nasty! I think I'll be thinking twice about dropping that slice of lemon into my Corona next time.
I loved getting lemons with my water at restaurants, it was one of those things that made being frugal somewhat worth it. A little lemon, and a little bit of sweet and low in the water just to give it a kick. A seemingly better substitute that soda. Plus, water is usually free.
My new awareness of the bacteria levels of lemon now make me wonder if there is even bacteria in the tap water they give us?
Is it safer to just order soda?
i agree that retiring early is wonderful, i did it myself. one thing i caution you about though is having a plan. i assume you do because you sound like you have your stuff together, but believe me if you don't there will be problems. retirement is not like a vacation, it is a lifestyle. you are young. your friends are not retired. the other retired people are older. just a few things to think about. good luck!!!
smiles, bee
You bring up a valid point, and one that we have researched. We do include bones of some sort with each meat serving, along with egg shells with any egg serving. They get cooked right along with the rest of the food. I also know that if you cook the meat right on the bone, a fair amount of calcium, usually from marrow, will cook right into the rest of the meal.
I know that there has always been discussion about a RAW diet vs. cooked recipes. We have had great results with the cooked diet. I have heard that you should add some bone meal to your pup's diet, and I know that this can be purchased as a supplemental additive.
Just as human diets have changed over the years (raw vs. cooked), domesticated dogs and cats have seen the same. I'm not entirely convinced that raw materials would be as beneficial for todays puggles, golden doodles, and scnhoodles as it was for their wild ancestors. This doesn't mean that it won't be good for them, or they won't enjoy it, but I personally don't eat raw. I also don't know where the raw foods on the supply chain are coming from. Homemade dog food came largely in response to fears of contimination. Serving raw meats won't do anything to ease the fears of pet owners.
It's good to hear that you did well on the raw meat diet for your pups, and I still recommend some form of calcium. Even our chickens get that in their diets!
Thanks!
is my favorite pessimism quote -- from Wireless Catalog.
From a practical standpoint, gratitude can help bring focus on what is important so that you can nurture those relationships, guard your health, maintain that home or car or boat, watch over those investments.
This is the LAST blog in which I would expect to find a flame war. I subscribe to WiseBread because it's real people offering real solutions to real problems. I want to hear about ways to make my tiny budget go farther, not listen to fanboys wow the masses with their effortless spouting of Apple specs.
I think the post is better suited for a place like The Consumerist, which gives voice to the myriad ways in which we get screwed by The Man.
The internet is full of tiny little soapboxes, each giving voice to some blogger's list of injustices. I don't read those. I read WiseBread. I check my Google Reader each morning, eagerly opening each post full of DIY ideas to make my life healthier and happier. Let's keep it that way!
I never want to retire! I'm going to work until I keel over. I would say that one big obstacle to retiring at 35 is that you need to fund not the usual 20 years or so of retirement, but forty or FIFTY! That's a pretty big nest egg. It means you have to accumulate enough wealth to live off the interest only--forever. For ten years, it's a challenge!
I will say the smartest thing I did financially in my twenties was to buy a house. We made a great deal of money from the equity in the house, and banked much of it when we traded up to a larger place.
Catherine Shaffer
Wise Bread Contributor
I've been thinking about this post for a week. I think you're right most of the time. A lot of good (or bad) "luck" is really just good (or bad) planning. On the other hand, there are some things that are truly just lucky or unlucky. They can be mitigated or exacerbated due to planning, but things just sometimes happen.
One of the biggest things we have absolutely no control over, but which establishes so much of our lives, is when, where, and to whom we're born. I can pretty much guarantee that anyone reading this blog was exceptionally lucky in the "birth" lottery -- we're all well enough off to have regular access to a computer, which means we're probably also all well enough off to live in a free country, have enough food, read and write arguably one of the most important languages on the planet (English)... none of these things are a given. In most times and places throughout history, this situation is not the norm. So we are all exceptionally lucky.
But when most people talk about "luck," they're talking about stuff that happens to them. This, too, has some element of chance in it. Bad "luck" is when someone in your apartment complex leaves the stove on by accident and there's a fire that destroys your apartment. Good planning can mitigate this (you have copies of your important documents in safe places, you have renter's insurance, you have family nearby to stay with), but it's still fundamentally bad luck that no amount of planning on your part could have changed.
There are also "good" luck things that you have no control over. You might be in line for the movies and find out you're the 100,000th customer and they're giving you a year's pass. Yay! That's just an example of great luck.
On the whole, I agree with you. I just think the issue's a little more complex than you make it out to be.
Cheers!
I don't understand how you can consider yourself a Mac junkie if you never upgraded to Tiger. Your situation is the equivalent of buying a DVD and expecting it to work in your VHS player. At least Apple's not asking you to upgrade to Blu-Ray (Leopard, in this case).
Your analogies don't work, BTW...if you had a classic car you would have to hunt around for the right tires. And this is the equivalent of retrofitting a new ice and water dispenser into an older refrigerator, not putting new food into one (that would be software).
Finally, if you want an iPod that you can download music to wirelessly, without a computer, get an iPod Touch.
What does the economic package mean for taxpayers that had already paid their taxes? Will we get any of the money? or Will we have to wait until next year?
Lindsey--if you are going to feed a home made diet to your dog, you should understand phosphorous-calcium balance. Here's a web site that takes a pretty critical look at home-made diets for pets: http://www.caberfeidh.com/NaturalDiet.htm
The money quote is here: "The common practice of feeding meat without bones (or bone meal) is nutritionally disastrous for dogs and cats. The correct proportion of meat to bones or bone meal is also poorly understood by many people, and their reliance on recommendations made by people who themselves don't know what they are doing makes the problem worse."
Personally, I am very supportive of home-made raw diets. You just need to make sure that your dog's diet contains adequate quantities of bone or bone meal to balance the meat. My understanding that a diet high in meat and low in calcium will leech calcium out of the dog's bones and could cause rickets or other permanent bone malformities.
I did a raw, home-made diet for about six years with my last dog, and she enjoyed excellent health and a long life. We didn't bother much with veggies, just gave her raw meaty bones, uncooked. She loved them. I would like to feed my current dogs the same way, but their consumption was 3-4 times each what the old dog was eating and it was putting us in the poor house. It is getting harder all the time to find waste meats or meat products, as the pet food industry takes them out of the food chain to make pet food to sell to us. With the rising cost of meat, I could hardly find anything that was less than $2/pound, and my dogs were going through 3-4 pounds per day each. *sigh* They loved it while it lasted, though. I think it is hard to save money with home made diets, but I enjoy sticking it tothe pet food industry. After all, we domesticated dogs for 10,000 years without Purina.
Catherine Shaffer
Wise Bread Contributor
washed the lemons that we put in the drinks when I worked at restaurants. Or at least I did. But if you think the lemons are gross from a restaurant, you would freak if you saw the stuff we were supposed to put into drinks behind the bar. My bartending days saw the same 5 olives sitting out on the counter night after night (only being covered and put away overnight) for almost 2 months! If I was making drinks, I'd just fish some fresh ones out of the jar (with a utensil, of course), or tell my friends NEVER to order a martini.....
I am such a crock pot girl. So much so, it's of note and a source of amusement for many who know me. So for the life of me, I don't know why I didn't think of it before either.
Guess it just shows the value of an extra mind in the group to help problem solve. This has really motivated me to tackle this. I thought I had gone the extra mile in making the eco treats form the Eco Dog book I reviewed, but was honestly still strying to figure out where on Earth I was going to find the time and energy to do food on a regular basis.
Now, I just have to find my super affordable protein source. While I grew up in a hunting household, my husband and I just don't for whatever reason. I'm wondering if an affordable cut supplemented by peanut butter and perhaps flaxseed oil? Just as a way to stretch out the meat?
I'm SO OPEN to suggestions . . .
We've been making our dog's food for a few years, but it has never occurred to me to use the slow-cooker. Thanks for this tip! This will make our lives even easier.
After trying a dozen different ways to make food, my hubby just got lazy (and genious) and threw everything in the slowcooker over night. My pup loves it, and clean up is a breeze!
You know, your timing on this piece couldn't be better. Crockpots are right up my alley, and whatever we choose as we try to make the transition to the homemade food, it has to be EASY. For more than reasons than normal, we are short on time this year.
I also like that you provided a system that is easily interchangeable. As usual, you've kept my budget in mind.
Thanks, girl!
This reminds me of a short quote I read which caused me to think about my attitude toward life. I'm sorry I don't know who said it.
"Pessimists are more often right, but optimists
are more often happy."
Honestly, I don't even know if it's true that pessimists are correct in their assumptions more often than optimists, but for me, the point was well taken. Who cares about being right all the time if you are miserable? Who wants to hang out with, or be there for a gloom and doom prophet? Clearly I'm not advocating a "cheerful ostrich" kind of attitude towards life, we need to be realistic, but beyond that, we can choose what we focus our attention on and be grateful for what we have.
The words "fecal bacteria" get a big rise out of people, but they're just talking about e. coli. No, it's not a great thing to have in your food, but the stuff is everywhere. It floats around in the air. At one point, there was a big deal about putting your toothbrush in a cabinet or something, because supposedly it would get fecal bacteria on it from the toilet flushing. I think it was on Mythbusters were they found that just as much "fecal bacteria" ended up on toothbrushes stored in the kitchen. Unless you're immune-compromised, it's nothing to worry about excessively. My mom was told not to eat any raw fruits or veggies at all while on chemo, because they all have potentially dangerous bacteria on them, if you have no immune system.
My guess for the high bacteria count is that no one thinks to wash lemons before slicing them. I know I don't. But we probably should if we are going to throw it, skin and all, into a drink.
Restaurant workers use their bare hands to prepare lots of other foods, and I use mine to prepare food at home, so I'm not worried about that. I'd much rather assume (hope) that they are washing up frequently.
Catherine Shaffer
Wise Bread Contributor
I'm not sure of the exact amount, but I'm pretty confident that Denmark spends next to nothing on national defense. Why? Because the United States, through NATO, is protecting Denmark's borders.
If Denmark would "man up" and defend itself, it wouldn't have the luxury of subsidizing health care, unemployment wages, free college education, etc. Or if it maintained those services and had to form a legitimate military, the tax rates would drive anyone who makes a decent living somewhere else -- like the U.S.
Denmark is like The Shire -- everyone outside the borders is doing all of the hard work so the hobbits can live a life of peace and quiet.