| Downsizing / opting out 07:55 - Jul 7 with 4037 views | bluelagos |
Following on from J2s thoughts - basically the idea of living a simpler minimalist life without the stress of a career and all that entails...
If you could make a switch now - what's the lowest amount of money that you would take (index linked) for life today. So if someone said here's £25k a year, for ever, but you are not allowed to ever earn another penny - would you take it?
Would you take less? Would you want more to do the deal?
You don't get to change your mind later, or take it later - the offer is only valid for today and you have to decide for you and your family.
Assume your mortgage is paid so what you get is what you live on and not a penny more. |  |
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| Downsizing / opting out on 16:31 - Jul 7 with 422 views | WeWereZombies |
| Downsizing / opting out on 16:21 - Jul 7 by bluelagos |
South America is defo a lot cheaper than UK - albeit some quite big differences from say Chile/Argentina to the cheaper places like Bolivia in my limited experiences.
Cheapest place I ever stayed was a hotel in Kenya that was $1 a night. The shower was a drip with a bucket to catch the water - bloke said it would be full by the morning and that I could use that. He was spot on too.
Never properly visited Asia but am told Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam are all super affordable - but always been put off by the sheer volume of people. |
I spent a month in Colombia at the start of the year and I think I never paid more than thirty five quid a night, nice places too - open courtyards with palms and statues, always a cooked breakfast served to you at table. I didn't do my research before going though and got stuck in the cities for fear of ending up somewhere I might get kidnapped, but I did have some memorable epic bus journeys with plenty of viaducts on view and one that ran along a mountain ridge with articulated trucks coming in the opposite direction that gave rise to a complex etiquette of who goes first and how much room is left in front. The driver bought some leaves from a big brass plate held aloft by a street seller before that part of the trip. I guess he needed something to sharpen the concentration and, as they say, el hoja de coca no es el droga. |  |
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| Downsizing / opting out on 16:34 - Jul 7 with 417 views | jayessess |
| Downsizing / opting out on 16:06 - Jul 7 by bluelagos |
Interesting perspective - cheers.
One thing that jumped at me - your comment on the wealthy effectively outsourcing their contributions to society - do you therefore object to people retiring at all? Or just retiring early?
Never really thought about it in the way you frame it - so cheers for the insight (even if I don't really sign up to it) |
I don't object to people retiring, no. I think people have a right to live parts of their lives without labouring and it's fine for people entering the last bit of their life, the bit where it's likely hardest (or impossible) for them to work, to be looked after by the rest of the community.
I suppose there's two things that inform my thinking here. I believe in a broad sense that we live in a social mode of production, billions of people labour to keep human societies going and that the distribution of wages, wealth, work and non-work time is fundamentally untethered from how hard you work, the importance or difficulty of the work you do and the contribution it makes to society.
So in a sense, almost every interaction in that society seems at least somewhat unfair to me (including my own job relative to others!). But it's not like I can just click my fingers and change all that, so you have to live with a lot of the inequity of a lot of it. Pensions/retirement isn't fair. I do a physically-non-demanding job and will retire at the same age as someone who did body-wrecking manual labour their whole life. Still, broadly I'd regard pensions as deferred wages, retirement as time off you've earned through a lifetime of contributing labour to society. Think it would stop sitting right with me if I spent a long period of my working life with the majority of my income coming from me passively benefiting from wealth-derived income. [Post edited 7 Jul 16:36]
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| Downsizing / opting out on 16:40 - Jul 7 with 377 views | MVBlue |
| Downsizing / opting out on 16:34 - Jul 7 by jayessess |
I don't object to people retiring, no. I think people have a right to live parts of their lives without labouring and it's fine for people entering the last bit of their life, the bit where it's likely hardest (or impossible) for them to work, to be looked after by the rest of the community.
I suppose there's two things that inform my thinking here. I believe in a broad sense that we live in a social mode of production, billions of people labour to keep human societies going and that the distribution of wages, wealth, work and non-work time is fundamentally untethered from how hard you work, the importance or difficulty of the work you do and the contribution it makes to society.
So in a sense, almost every interaction in that society seems at least somewhat unfair to me (including my own job relative to others!). But it's not like I can just click my fingers and change all that, so you have to live with a lot of the inequity of a lot of it. Pensions/retirement isn't fair. I do a physically-non-demanding job and will retire at the same age as someone who did body-wrecking manual labour their whole life. Still, broadly I'd regard pensions as deferred wages, retirement as time off you've earned through a lifetime of contributing labour to society. Think it would stop sitting right with me if I spent a long period of my working life with the majority of my income coming from me passively benefiting from wealth-derived income. [Post edited 7 Jul 16:36]
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Passive income and FIRE gives one the choice of what they do.
A lot of community work is voluntary and unpaid.
And those that do it have made enough money to have the freedom to choose what to do with their time. |  |
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| Downsizing / opting out on 16:41 - Jul 7 with 373 views | WeWereZombies |
| Downsizing / opting out on 16:34 - Jul 7 by jayessess |
I don't object to people retiring, no. I think people have a right to live parts of their lives without labouring and it's fine for people entering the last bit of their life, the bit where it's likely hardest (or impossible) for them to work, to be looked after by the rest of the community.
I suppose there's two things that inform my thinking here. I believe in a broad sense that we live in a social mode of production, billions of people labour to keep human societies going and that the distribution of wages, wealth, work and non-work time is fundamentally untethered from how hard you work, the importance or difficulty of the work you do and the contribution it makes to society.
So in a sense, almost every interaction in that society seems at least somewhat unfair to me (including my own job relative to others!). But it's not like I can just click my fingers and change all that, so you have to live with a lot of the inequity of a lot of it. Pensions/retirement isn't fair. I do a physically-non-demanding job and will retire at the same age as someone who did body-wrecking manual labour their whole life. Still, broadly I'd regard pensions as deferred wages, retirement as time off you've earned through a lifetime of contributing labour to society. Think it would stop sitting right with me if I spent a long period of my working life with the majority of my income coming from me passively benefiting from wealth-derived income. [Post edited 7 Jul 16:36]
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Now I've retired I am doing three unpaid voluntary jobs as well as calling in on a couple of people to see if they are OK now and again. It's a mugs game, I would much rather have a job where I can skive off from doing anything demanding and steal a living, actually I hear Nodge are on a bit of a recruitment drive at the moment. | |
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| Downsizing / opting out on 17:21 - Jul 7 with 301 views | Ryorry |
One interesting constant to this thread is that everyone seems to come back to money, how much they think they'll need.
For me, opting out would mean self-sufficiency, or as close to that as poss. John Seymour's is the legendary bible here -
https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/complete-book-of-self-sufficiency-bo
I had a couple of short stints living in commune-style self-sufficiency places in my yoof, but found the lack of privacy wasn't for me. In my mid-40s I started & ran for 20 years, a small organic smallholding in a remote rented property, producing some of my own food, but too small a place to go the whole hog (sorry).
Not many people consider self-builds, or small-space living (tree-houses, vans, boats, shepherds' huts, railway wagons etc.), which I'd say if you want to get out of the rat-race are well-worth considering. Fans of George Clarke's 'Amazing Spaces' on C4 will know what I'm talking about!
It's possible to live on little (around what the SP is now) if you don't take holidays, eat out regularly, drive an expensive car or rent/buy in a sought after area. I'd say living amongst friendly people in a friendly community is the important thing. People should also bear in mind that human bodies are vulnerable, so have in place contingency plans for illness or disability that might suddenly arise. Age inevitably catches up too! |  |
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| Downsizing / opting out on 17:46 - Jul 7 with 275 views | J2BLUE |
| Downsizing / opting out on 17:21 - Jul 7 by Ryorry |
One interesting constant to this thread is that everyone seems to come back to money, how much they think they'll need.
For me, opting out would mean self-sufficiency, or as close to that as poss. John Seymour's is the legendary bible here -
https://www.worldofbooks.com/en-gb/products/complete-book-of-self-sufficiency-bo
I had a couple of short stints living in commune-style self-sufficiency places in my yoof, but found the lack of privacy wasn't for me. In my mid-40s I started & ran for 20 years, a small organic smallholding in a remote rented property, producing some of my own food, but too small a place to go the whole hog (sorry).
Not many people consider self-builds, or small-space living (tree-houses, vans, boats, shepherds' huts, railway wagons etc.), which I'd say if you want to get out of the rat-race are well-worth considering. Fans of George Clarke's 'Amazing Spaces' on C4 will know what I'm talking about!
It's possible to live on little (around what the SP is now) if you don't take holidays, eat out regularly, drive an expensive car or rent/buy in a sought after area. I'd say living amongst friendly people in a friendly community is the important thing. People should also bear in mind that human bodies are vulnerable, so have in place contingency plans for illness or disability that might suddenly arise. Age inevitably catches up too! |
It comes down to whether you want freedom within the system or freedom outside of the system. One needs a certain amount of money continuously flowing in. The other probably has a decent start up cost then lessens once you get the ball rolling.
For me, being off grid is my worst nightmare. I get a sense of dread even imagining retiring to my piece of land and opting out of society (to a large extent at least). I very much want to live inside the system while having some freedom.
The other thing no one has mentioned is going part time. I mentioned a four day week which gives me a nice amount of free time. In time, maybe I drop to 3 days, then 2...etc. Doesn't have to be all or nothing (not saying you have suggested it does) |  |
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