“Ditch the Doorman for the Cul-de-Sac”

[svelte]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=spdrun]Well, take housing advice from someone like that if you don’t want to spend the next 20 years with a ball and chain around your leg :D[/quote]

also, my wife and kids were net moneymakers for me. She makes money. The kids make me get up and work every day. I never wouldve bought a giant mansion without my crazy wife. i probably wouldnt have even gotten a 401k. i wouldnt have gone to law school. i certainly never wouldve kept working. [/quote]

Exactly! Scaredy gets it!

I’ve often told my wife that had I not met her, I would have moseyed through life without accomplishing much. I didn’t really care…if I was having fun, that was all I needed. Maybe I’d finish my degree, maybe I wouldn’t.
Maybe I’d work hard, maybe I’d take some time off.

But suddenly, when I had a gf then wife then kids, I had someone that made me strive to be better and more successful.

One of my favorite movie lines of all time is when Jack Nicholson said “You make me want to be a better man” in “As Good As It Gets”. He summarized in that one line exactly what I knew to be true in my own life.

So it’s exactly as scaredy said…those balls and chains actually made me quite a bit of money…way more than they cost me.

And when I look back at the males in my family tree, I can almost see the moment their life took off…the moment they met their wife. I can’t go back and reconstruct whether my theory is true for all of them, but I suspect it is…

[svelte]

[spdrun]

See, I don’t dream of being a better person. I want to spend my life in a 1-bedroom apartment that I can sublet in summer and go backpacking. I lack aspirations. I’m like The Stranger … the world is just a moving diorama for me.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=spdrun]See, I don’t dream of being a better person. I want to spend my life in a 1-bedroom apartment that I can sublet in summer and go backpacking. I lack aspirations. I’m like The Stranger … the world is just a moving diorama for me.[/quote]

I could be happy with that too.

[svelte]

I don’t look down on single folks who never met that right someone and therefore don’t aspire to greater things. That could very well have been me. I dated a lot, but after a few dates that was it, time to move on. I became bored easily. No long term gfs until I met my wife. So I could very well have ended up single my entire life and actually I was starting to think (worry?) that would be the case.

We have several super smart friends in NorCal who did marry and find the right person but still chose not to apply themselves or chose artistic careers that don’t pay. I’ll never understand that, but if it makes them happy so be it. I figure if I’m working hard I might as well be doing something that pays well…

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]See, I don’t dream of being a better person. I want to spend my life in a 1-bedroom apartment that I can sublet in summer and go backpacking. I lack aspirations. I’m like The Stranger … the world is just a moving diorama for me.[/quote]

And there is nothing wrong with wanting to live a more simple life with a much more frugal budget so you don’t need to to put as much effort into earning money , either actively or passively…But then if that’s the case, why in the past was there a constant need for things to crash and burn just so one can finally go “all in” to make a big killing? It seems to be contradictory.

See if simplicity is all you are seeking, then the simple thing to have done all these years is , again , slowly drip a tiny amount of money each month into a no frills basket of index funds and bonds, which over all these years would have slowly earned you a pretty large amount…. slowly….It might not make you a lot right awayz but 10-20-30 years later you’d be laughing all the way to the bank. That certainly seems like it would have been a strategy much more consistent with living simple and not putting that much effort into things than trying to predict when the next market crash will be, moving “all in”, and then making a killing on that one hand. afterall, the latter would depend on more of your luck and timing. For example, right after covid hit and the markets briefly tanked, going “all in” as you previously suggested would have allowed one to amass a fortune. Of course looking back everything is clear 100% of what one should have done. But question is when the markets were trashed, did one move money into the markets in a significant way, or did you think things were going to fall an additional 50%+ and sit it out? Again, I’m just trying to understand and reconcile this inconsistency of wanting to live more simple and frugally but at the same time seemingly depending and wanting a one hit, one large score of being right on a huge downturn in order to financially make it whole, when the slow, drip style passive investing, seems likke it would have been a lot more consistent for this more simple life. I don’t get it.

[Coronita]

[quote=scaredyclassic][quote=Coronita]Put in time now or put in time later, there is no free lunch (well, at least most of the time). I keep hearing people refer to work while they are younger as ball and chain. The funny part is that ball and chain exists for a lot of people a lot longer who didn’t put the time up front, it’s just stretched out over a longer period of time, lol.[/quote]

And he said to the man, “You listened to your wife and ate the fruit which I told you not to eat. Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. But lo, on the 857,934th day of creation, the Lord created Monsanto, and GMO crops, and many fertilizers as a result of the Lord’s Green Revolution, and the Lord said: I shall not let you go hungry again, even if you don’t work all that hard, as long as you’re not really really poor, and do not reside in one of those shithole countries ruled over by King Trump. So sayeth the Lord.”[/quote]

I would look at this a different way. I think you should be thankful you found a good woman, and that she stayed with you for many years, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, put up with a lot of male stupidity, helped you make some really good decisions that as a single male you would never have made, encouraged you to be a better person while not making you feel awful when/if you fell short, raised 2.000 kids with you that seemed to have turned out well, and didn’t ditch you the moment a hotter, more successful guy walked into her life. Just saying…I’d say you had a pretty good life…

[The-Shoveler]

It’s never perfect but I would say in my life I would have never done or experienced half the things I have over the last 25 years had it not been for my wife.

My life would have just been less.

[scaredyclassic]

“Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up” -Joseph Barth

Growing up may however be overrated

[svelte]

[quote=The-Shoveler]It’s never perfect but I would say in my life I would have never done or experienced half the things I have over the last 25 years had it not been for my wife.

My life would have just been less.[/quote]

+1

[quote=scaredyclassic]
“Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up” -Joseph Barth

Growing up may however be overrated
[/quote]

+1

[scaredyclassic]

well, I always wanted a kid (not 3, but that’s another story) and being married seemed reasonable enough. I like other humans around, etc. of course marriage too is extremely risky and scary. one of my favorite short poems about being married and having kids and aging and the whole enterprise being wildly out of your control:

A Little Tooth
Thomas Lux – 1946-2017

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It’s all

over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.

[i also really like the use of the word flyblown there]

[spdrun]

Coronita – what don’t you get? One may want to be independent of having to work as soon as possible, not when they’re 60 or 70, with bad knees and health problems. Did very well with COVID and will likely do even better in the future … airline, transport, and travel stocks are still beat to fucking hell and will likely pop when a vaccine is announced. Property in urban areas that I like will also likely take a fucking in the next year. Estate sales, coming riiiight up. I like condos, but they’re out of fashion for now since you can’t socially distance as easily.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=spdrun]Coronita – what don’t you get? One may want to be independent of having to work as soon as possible, not when they’re 60 or 70, with bad knees and health problems. Did very well with COVID and will likely do even better in the future … airline, transport, and travel stocks are still beat to fucking hell and will likely pop when a vaccine is announced. Property in urban areas that I like will also likely take a fucking in the next year. Estate sales, coming riiiight up. I like condos, but they’re out of fashion for now since you can’t socially distance as easily.[/quote]

hold on a minute there you young whippersnapper. I’m almost 60.

[Coronita]

[quote=spdrun]Coronita – what don’t you get? One may want to be independent of having to work as soon as possible, not when they’re 60 or 70, with bad knees and health problems. Did very well with COVID and will likely do even better in the future … airline, transport, and travel stocks are still beat to fucking hell and will likely pop when a vaccine is announced. Property in urban areas that I like will also likely take a fucking in the next year. Estate sales, coming riiiight up. I like condos, but they’re out of fashion for now since you can’t socially distance as easily.[/quote]

But that’s a fallacy. You aren’t financially independent right now , or in the past. You still work. Yes, you run your own small consulting biz. But instead of working for an employer, you work directly for customers. They ask you to jump you say how high. You’re limited by the number of customers you have and subject to the risk of them cancelling biz with you. And it sounds like you have to be very careful on what you spend money on, even when it comes to basic essentials, no different like anyone else. You still have a boss, still have to work, and if you make less than a comparable peer employed at a company for an extended period of time, still further away from financial independence from a salaried peer.

[scaredyclassic]

this sounds like what an old person might say, but gosh darn it, 60 isn’t so old. i feel great!

really, maybe the goal shouldnt be X amount of wealth by 60, but X amount of health.

would one’s future be more secure at age 60 with (a) a couple million net worth but shaky health, or (b) having perfect cholesterol numbers, a 6 pack, no meds, flexible and fit, good teeth and gums, 9 hours good sleep a night and no depression, but just 4,300 in your checking account.

wheres brian when you need him.

I think there’s an argument that a not necessarily better than b. b will probably have more fun, in any event, unless he’s still married to a normal woman, who will not like this.

obviously, both are nice. but i would definitely sacrifice a certain amount of health for a certain amount of wealth. it shows by how i live my life. I value money over mental health.

why live without money?

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