What caught my eye this week.

Not one but two must-read articles for you this week. Less than ideal now the sun is finally showing its face, I know.

The first comes from the ever-reliable Portfolio Charts.

Inspired by the many criticisms that ‘safe’ withdrawal rate (SWR) research has overwhelmingly focused on US returns, Portfolio Charts conducted an incredibly deep dive into the SWRs of other countries – and also the myriad different asset allocation mixes you could have chosen to achieve them.

It’s a valuable read. Not because I think anybody should load up on any particular asset allocation that proved successful in the past – we do not know the future – but for the illustration of:

• How a lot of different assets can work together to deliver a decent SWR
• How, nevertheless, the resultant SWRs still varied quite widely

Today everybody should really have at least a somewhat globally diversified retirement portfolio. So to that extent, individual country returns are moot.

The point rather is to see again why global diversification is so valuable in the first place.

Unless you do have a perfect crystal ball, of course. In which case buy the best and forget the rest!

(Spoiler: you don’t have a crystal ball).

It was different in their day

Secondly, a powerful article from John Burn-Murdoch on the growing wealth inequality that’s caused by wildly different outcomes when it comes to inheritance and property.

For more than 15 years I’ve been arguing on Monevator that inheritance taxes should be far higher to curb us from inching back into a feudal state. While many childless people get the point, those with biologically-activated selfish genes tend to say “maybe, but not my kids”.

I understand people love their children and want to do whatever they can for them. Also that preventing that can seem draconian and punitive.

But where do we want to end up as a society?

Well, here’s where we’re going:

As you can see, boomer parents – who rage indignantly about being ‘taxed twice’ when they die and their children get something for nothing – grew up in a different world.

Not only had many started building property wealth by their 30s, but the gap between the average boomer and those who were really making progress with property was also far narrower.

Burn-Murdoch notes:

The average millennial still has zero housing wealth at a point where the average boomer had been building equity in their first home for several years.

But the top 10% of thirtysomethings have £300,000 of property wealth to their names, almost triple where the wealthiest boomers were at the same age.

These differentials are the result of wealth becoming increasingly hereditary:

Bee Boileau and David Sturrock at the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that more than a third of young UK homeowners received help from family.

Even among those getting assistance there are huge disparities, with the most fortunate 10th each receiving £170,000, compared with the average gift of £25,000.

I suppose it’s possible this is a one-time enrichment caused by the spectacularly lucky lives of the Boomer generation in the US, UK, and Europe. There’s signs that the generational wealth escalator has flatlined.

So perhaps the feudalisation is a one-off event? Bad, in my view, but maybe it won’t get worse.

The robber barons next door

But what if it does get worse?

Do we really want to be in a situation in 30 years where it almost doesn’t matter where you study, what job you get, or how hard you work – for the average person whether you can buy a nice home is not a reflection of your efforts and talent but how well your grandparents did with property in the 1980s?

I’d tax the recipients of inheritances at their highest rate of income – so 45% for those enjoying large windfalls in a particular year – perhaps after a modest allowance of £20,000 or so, as a sop to the atavistic realities.

No it’s not a perfect solution but what is?

Have a great weekend.

[continue reading…]

Somewhat shockingly, it is now exactly 14 years since Monevator was lucky enough to post a three-part mini-series written by a man named Jacob – the up-and-coming voice behind an intriguing blog called Early Retirement Extreme.

Then describing himself as semi-retired in his early 30s, Jacob was living an unusual lifestyle. One partly funded with investment income and partly from part-time work.

In those faraway times when almost nobody had heard of the term FIRE, Jacob’s views were radical and exciting.

My 2010 introduction read: “While I see echoes of his lifestyle in my own, Jacob goes much further than I do – indeed his approach won’t suit many! But his explanation of what he does and why will certainly make you think.”

The first part of my introduction has stood the test of time. But with tens of thousands of people having since pursued the so-called LeanFIRE path to financial freedom, the second part not so much! (There’s even a povertyFIRE subreddit that occasionally name checks him, though I doubt Jacob would approve of the term.)

Anyway since 99% percent of people reading Monevator today were not around in those prehistoric days, I’ve republished the first article below.

You’ll find it just as Jacob wrote it all those years ago, followed by links to his two follow-up posts. Do check out the original comment thread too for a couple of familiar faces…

Finally Jacob Lund Fisker – we eventually got a full name – went on to write a book called Early Retirement Extreme, if you want to learn even more.

Okay, cue the time travel music, and over to Jacob…

I am 34-years old. I have been financially independent since I was 30. That is to say, my passive income from broker and savings accounts has exceeded my expenses each year (except in 2008 where I relied on carryovers from previous years).

According to Monte Carlo simulations like FIREcalc, it will continue to do so for the next 60 years.

I no longer work for a living. I managed this through a combination of saving most of my income while I was working and figuring out how to spend very little money. You can read my story, but if you want to become financially independent and have your money working for you, it is better not to repeat some of the mistakes I made.

I did not make bank in the real estate bubble or start a successful company. Nor did I achieve superior investment returns.

In fact, I used to be an astrophysicist, a career that pays about as well as long-haul trucking, but which allows some paid travel for one to see the world (I guess the same holds for trucking), whereby the world I mean places like CERN, Princeton, Los Alamos, and other labs, universities and the occasional resort.

I worked in that field for nine years (four of them in grad school). It would be fair to say that I have retired from that career.

What I do in my early retirement

I spend time writing a book, keeping my blog going, and serving on the board of directors for a non-profit start-up.

When I am not being ‘productive’:

• I crew on a 34-foot racing yacht once a week, working my way up to ocean racing. I recently crewed on my first short ocean race going under the Golden Gate bridge and onto the Pacific Ocean.

• I practice shinkendo, which is applied Japanese swordsmanship, four hours a week.

• I also repair bikes occasionally, helping out in keeping the fleet working for a women’s shelter and ‘marrying’ broken bikes into functional ones.

I’ve always liked writing. I used to blog privately on MySpace about anything and everything until I discovered the existence of public blogs – mainly personal finance blogs.

I thought I had enough material about personal finance to write daily, so I started my blog Early Retirement Extreme in December 2007 and I have been going at it ever since.

Early retirement: what’s in it for you?

I want people to take a step back and think about why they live as they do.

Today we are twice as productive as in the 1950s, meaning we could live a 1950s lifestyle with better technology and a four-hour work day as a single income family.

Yet people now seem to need two incomes just to get by, and apparently millions of dollars to retire.

So many life skills have been lost on the way to the mall to buy cheap junk and fake happiness. People own huge houses that they work so hard to pay off that they only have time to sleep in them or crash and watch TV. They drive expensive cars stop-and-go at 20mph to go to work, mainly to pay for the few hours they spend outside of work.

It could be very different. I want to show how it is possible to live happily without spending a lot and without using a lot of resources.

If the Earth was a pie, it is not growing bigger, and yet there are 120 million more people being added every year. We’ll pass seven billion within a few years. You can see that in greater competition – including wars – for resources, which is reflected in things like the price spikes for oil, metals, gold, and corn.

I think the point of diminishing returns was reached some time ago in terms of competition as a viable strategy to a better life. It is much more efficient to learn to live well on less than to waste time and energy competing for more.

Further reading on the Early Retirement Extreme method

The Investor here again, in 2024 with a few more pointers…

You should definitely read Jacob’s second article for Monevator, where he shared some ways of living frugally that enabled his early retirement.

The third and final part is a call to live differently if you want a different outcome to the norm.

Jacob’s Early Retirement Extreme blog is no longer updated (archive posts are regularly re-dated) but there’s still a functioning US-focused forum.

Were you inspired by Jacob back in the day? (I know @TA was.)

Please tell us how extreme you got – and whether it worked for you – in the comments below.