Financial Independence BURNT OUT healthcare worker escape plan *critique please* |
| BURNT OUT healthcare worker escape plan *critique please* Posted: 16 Jan 2022 09:47 PM PST TLDR: Burnt out federal & state healthcare worker with access to many retirement accounts. Is it better to max out these retirements accounts or go all in on real estate if I want to retire ASAP? 30 YO UC healthcare worker, income of $130K-$160K depending on overtime. Hospital is both federal and state so I have access to UC pension, 457B, 403B, 401A DCP and HSA. Currently have 200K invested in the various retirement accounts below (index funds). No house, not married, no kids, no loans and total monthly cost of living is approximately $1500. I'm burning out and would like to retire ASAP. Is it better to max out the accounts below or start going all in on real estate, because i don't want my money locked up until 55 and up? Work Perks w/ Contribution Limits: UC Pension: 9% of pay checks = Average of highest 3 years x retirement factor (50% of that average after 20 yrs, 75% of that average after 30 yrs, etc) 457B: $19,500 (no match) 403B: $19,500 (no match) 401A DCP: $58,000 HSA: $3,650 Retirement Plan without any real estate and withdrawal ages (without penalties): Age 0-55 Cash Taxable Brokerage 457B *can be withdrawn when you leave company* HSA *for medical expenses only* Age 55 UC Pension 401A DCP 401k/403B/TSP Age 59 Roth IRA Age 62-70 Social security HSA: age 65 for non-medical expenses [link] [comments] |
| Is FIRE the New Movement that Will Ultimately End Western Civilization? Posted: 17 Jan 2022 01:38 AM PST The Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement or phenomenon started in the early 1990s when Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez first published their book, "Your Money or Your Life". It is not that the idea of retiring early was unknown prior to their book, it was that they radicalized it by bringing it from obscurity into the mainstream. This idea has since blossomed and gained wide acceptance among many. Today, FIRE adherents are mostly young, bright, and dynamic. They are mostly Gens Y's and Z's. Yet, FIRE as a movement has only been around for about 30 years. For example, when I joined this subreddit about 6 months ago, there were about 600,000 members. Over the course of six months, the membership of this community has almost doubled. This is incredible! There seems to be an acceleration in interest and acceptance of the FIRE philosophy. The younger generations are taking charge of their financial lives and saving at rates that vastly exceed prior generations. The appeal of FIRE is the idea of being able to save aggressively while reducing cost. It is a rejection of extreme consumerism, the very basis upon which our economy is built. Spending by Americans constitutes about 60% of our economy. Economists consistently tell us that if we stop spending, the American economy will slow down and could lead to recession. Therefore, governments both on the right and the left agree that spending by Americans is how to keep the American economy growing and therefore make policies to encourage us to do so. Before I continue on this opinion piece, please allow me to tell my story. I know many may disagree with my opinion. But this is not a criticism of the FIRE movement. It is a discourse on the potential unintended consequences of FIRE even as laudable as the original intention might be. I have been an adherent and advocate of the philosophies of FIRE myself since the last 5 years when I first heard of it from Mr. Money Mustache. As a middle aged-man and with my current invested assets, I'll be coasting to retirement at 62 years if I do not put any additional dollar in savings. But if I continue at my current savings rate, I will FIRE at 55. This latter possibility is my goal. I love FIRE and yearn for the freedom to be able to use the 24-hours of my day as I please. But I am worried about what the future holds if FIRE continues to gain strong popularity especially among the young in our society. I am not an economist, but I know this country needs the young to keep working because that is how it is structured. In my opinion, FIRE is trying to solve a problem the government has been unable to solve. FIRE is an individualistic solution to the issue of inflexibility in work arrangements and structures. Government has failed to solve this issue communally. For example, do we know that working daily 8-5 with minimal time off and rest is the optimum for the human being? If people feel empowered to structure their own work hours, leave, and perhaps pay, would there still be strong desires to FIRE? If I knew that each time I felt burned out and stressed at work, I could just tell my boss that I was taking two months off to recuperate without any risk to my job, would I still feel inclined to want to retire early? The American nation is about 250 years old and has remained the greatest nation on earth because of capitalism. We could have a debate on whether capitalism in its current form is optimal or whether reforms are needed. But that is a different topic for another day and forum. Warren Buffet said in a CNBC interview, "If you look at what was here in 1776 and you look at what's here now, this country has done an incredible job in terms of the deployment of resources and human ingenuity." I agree with Warren Buffet. It is the deployment of resources and human ingenuity that has made America great. Other western economies are a mirror reflection of the American economy. There is no denying the fact that the reason why FIRE is possible is because of the miracle of our financial markets, which is made possible by capitalism. The financial markets in the United States are the most advanced, sophisticated, stable, and the largest in the world. FIRE is possible because of the miracle of compounding i.e., the idea that I can buy a piece of security today and expect its value to grow over time. Without this miracle, FIRE will NOT be possible. And there are only a relatively few countries in the world where FIRE is possible. Therefore, it is a privilege to live in a country with conditions that make the idea of FIRE a possibility. Over 5 billion people in the world do not have this privilege. The challenge with FIRE is that an outsized proportion of its adherents are young. They are mostly of the younger generations Y and Z. This is apparent from a large proportion of postings you see on this subreddit. A good number of these young people are choosing not to have children and many live in single and dual income homes. Although in principle, anybody can practice the principles of FIRE. But nobody can earn a minimum wage and expect to FIRE at a young age. This has skewed the majority of FIRE adherents to young upper middle-class Americans making a lot of money across a host of industries including technology, engineering, finance, and medicine etc. These young people do not want to spend their healthy active years stuck under the grind of a 9-5. Many of them love what they do. They just don't like the inflexibility of their work arrangements. And this is a valid point. But the danger in this new FIRE lifestyle is that the very fabric of our economy as currently constituted is for individuals to (1) keep working until their mid-sixties (social security age), (2) reproduce so a younger generation could take over from them, and (3) keep spending to grow the economy. FIRE is now distorting this structure and understanding. It is making the younger generation to leave workforce early and many of them are choosing not have children to replace our aging workforce. Also, because these young people are choosing to save a large proportion of their earnings, the economy is being denied the needed stimulation from spending. If the young people who are supposed to be working to keep our financial markets and other industries going are retiring early, who will keep these industries running and innovating? Wouldn't the reduction in labor participation as well as spending ultimately lead to weakening of the economy and eventual collapse of capitalism at least as we know it today? If capitalism collapses, those who have FIRE'd would have to return to work and those prospecting for FIRE would have to work forever. My solution is for adherents of FIRE to use their platforms to change how we view and do work in this country. It took a debilitating pandemic to teach employers that people could still be productive working remotely. A lot of employers are now allowing permanent work-from-home contracts or some sort of a mix of work-from-home and in-person contracts. We have power and we can innovate. We can make proposals that change how work is done in 21st century America and use our platforms to propose and sponsor a change in legislation. Instead of just pursuing an individualistic solution, can we also pursue a collective one? As I said earlier, why is it not possible for us to have individualized work arrangements? People are probably likely to stick around longer with an employer if they have the ability to structure their own work arrangements. [link] [comments] |
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