[saltbeef]

Interventional cardiology?
 
in seriousness something like public health might be interesting? I considered this when there were no cardiology numbers. Law conversion degree and med neg?

I'll try and think of other things.

[petejh]

My advice, if you haven't yet then to both start reading up on different perspectives on how much money you need to be financially independent and to finish work early. It may change what you both consider 'worth' doing.

[abarro81]

My advice, if you haven't yet then to both start reading up on different perspectives on how much money you need to be financially independent and to finish work early. It may change what you both consider 'worth' doing.

Any links/recommendations on this front? Having had a real job for nearly 4 years now I feel about ready to retire 

[Teaboy]

I don't have any links but a couple of years ago my wife and I got a joint account with a view to seeing how much money we needed to survive. The idea was that all household bills ex-mortgage (which we'd need to payoff before retirement) would come from this and and once income from sources outside of wages (pension, savings or whatever your particular side hustle is) matched this then that's the time to retire. Problem was we've not had the discipline to stick to this and also my wife's predilection for buying tat like cushions, baskets, multiple cleaning products for doing essentially the same thing etc.

[petejh]

My advice, if you haven't yet then to both start reading up on different perspectives on how much money you need to be financially independent and to finish work early. It may change what you both consider 'worth' doing.

Any links/recommendations on this front? Having had a real job for nearly 4 years now I feel about ready to retire 

Yes. I've been reading loads around this recently for good reasons.

Typically the yanks have turned it into a 'thing'. FIRE (financial independence retire early). 
Various bloggers and youtubers of course, many of them typically annoying but the underlying theories can be useful and possibly enlightening.

I hesitate to provide links... many of these types come across a bit cultish. Look up 'MMM retire early'. The maths of it is interesting.


edit: this probably merits its own thread.

[tomtom]

My advice, if you haven't yet then to both start reading up on different perspectives on how much money you need to be financially independent and to finish work early. It may change what you both consider 'worth' doing.

An alternative - or half way house is to work part time. Both me and MrsTT work 50% Half the salary obvs - and you have to keep an eye on the pension....

Who knows but it’s helped my well-being immensely over the last 5 years...

[ali k]

Yes. I've been reading loads around this recently for good reasons.

Typically the yanks have turned it into a 'thing'. FIRE (financial independence retire early).

I’ve seen these. Isn’t the gist of it basically to earn as much as you possibly can (from various income streams), crucially as early as you can, and literally not to spend anything beyond what you need to survive and put all spare cash into pensions and other investments?

Doesn’t strike me as rocket science.

[abarro81]

I’ve seen these. Isn’t the gist of it basically to earn as much as you possibly can (from various income streams), crucially as early as you can, and literally not to spend anything beyond what you need to survive and put all spare cash into pensions and other investments?

Doesn’t strike me as rocket science.

Oh. That's kind of a crappy option, sacrificing your youth for a promised future always seemed too high risk to be worth it to me, what if you get hit by a bus (or chronically injured etc.). There's a reason I didn't go into the city and get paid lots for selling my soul/life  0.5FTE sounds much more appealing!

[turnipturned]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but in there is a huge amount of work linking environment sector and health. I.e Green prescribing etc.

Would be great having more people working in the environment sector with a health background!!

[petejh]

I’ve seen these. Isn’t the gist of it basically to earn as much as you possibly can (from various income streams), crucially as early as you can, and literally not to spend anything beyond what you need to survive and put all spare cash into pensions and other investments?

Doesn’t strike me as rocket science.

Oh. That's kind of a crappy option, sacrificing your youth for a promised future always seemed too high risk to be worth it to me, what if you get hit by a bus (or chronically injured etc.). There's a reason I didn't go into the city and get paid lots for selling my soul/life  0.5FTE sounds much more appealing!

It needs it's own discussion. (although it's implicitly related to the original question posted).

I don't think there's any one-size fits all. Everyone's emotional and mental health in response to work, purpose in life and money, is different. But I do think there is a tendency among people in the UK (and certainly in the US) to be quite fearful of the cost of living and how much they need in the future to be happy. Bred into us by 'the system'.. consumption of goods/lifestyles = status, = happiness.
Etc. etc.

Fear seems to lie at the heart of it. Anything fearful needs examining, to see if it's a rational fear.

There are certainly some perspectives from the 'FIRE' brigade that have a good deal of truthiness about them..

[Teaboy]

I’ve seen these. Isn’t the gist of it basically to earn as much as you possibly can (from various income streams), crucially as early as you can, and literally not to spend anything beyond what you need to survive and put all spare cash into pensions and other investments?

Doesn’t strike me as rocket science.

That's part of it. The other angle to these "I paid off my mortgage by 24" success stories seems to be to be gifted a huge sum of money by wealthy parents or set up a high risk business safe in the knowledge that it it goes toes up you have the security of your parents to fall back on.

[Oldmanmatt]

I’ve seen these. Isn’t the gist of it basically to earn as much as you possibly can (from various income streams), crucially as early as you can, and literally not to spend anything beyond what you need to survive and put all spare cash into pensions and other investments?

Doesn’t strike me as rocket science.

That's part of it. The other angle to these "I paid off my mortgage by 24" success stories seems to be to be gifted a huge sum of money by wealthy parents or set up a high risk business safe in the knowledge that it it goes toes up you have the security of your parents to fall back on.

I have no mortgage, two houses and poor parents (financially, otherwise exceptionally supportive (in that very Italian way in my mother’s case). I’m semi-retired. Originally to run my dream climbing gym etc etc.
However, incredibly bored and really quite fed up with living on a rigid, if adequate, income.
Hence my own drive back into some sort of career.
Be advised, that is not an easy transition after eight years in the wilderness.
Be sure you are comfortable “retired” before you settle into it.

[ali k]

I don't think there's any one-size fits all. Everyone's emotional and mental health in response to work, purpose in life and money, is different.
There are certainly some perspectives from the 'FIRE' brigade that have a good deal of truthiness about them..

This is just the same old internal discussions that everyone has isn't it? (i.e. work-life balance). And most people sit somewhere on the spectrum. The FIRE brigade have just turned it into a 'thing' by advocating taking it to its most extreme, in the same way as people make a thing on the internet about extreme diets, or 'minimalism', or disappearing off into the wilderness to live with the flowers or whatever.

[Oldmanmatt]

I don't think there's any one-size fits all. Everyone's emotional and mental health in response to work, purpose in life and money, is different.
There are certainly some perspectives from the 'FIRE' brigade that have a good deal of truthiness about them..

This is just the same old internal discussions that everyone has isn't it? (i.e. work-life balance). And most people sit somewhere on the spectrum. The FIRE brigade have just turned it into a 'thing' by advocating taking it to its most extreme, in the same way as people make a thing on the internet about extreme diets, or 'minimalism', or disappearing off into the wilderness to live with the flowers or whatever.

Always wary of people who make money out of telling me how easy it is to make money...

[petejh]

No no you're getting it all wrong.. since the advent of the internet, whatever choices you make in life mark you for categorisation so that you can be part of a group who's members can identify with one another and chat back n forth about it on web forums such as.. umm.. this one.
If you're frugal with money and drop out of work, you're part of the FIRE group. Identifying and naming these patterns of behaviour or thinking is seemingly an important part of the human experience.

[ali k]

No no you're getting it all wrong..
If you're frugal with money and drop out of work, you're part of the FIRE group.

No I get it. These people are making extreme life choices in order to retire early and have decided to label themselves and advocate their methods. I just don't see their methods as being anything other than an extreme version of what most people do (or would want to do given the opportunity). Whether that's working in the city and retiring at 40, working two jobs to increase your income, living a very frugal lifestyle so you can work part-time etc or just muddling along somewhere in the middle. They're all decisions we make (or would like the option to make - note most of these FIRE types are well-educated graduates who have the ability to be high earners in their 20s and 30s and the opportunity to get on the housing ladder. Try selling this dream to someone working two jobs on minimum wage, living frugally, and still stuck renting and working in their 70s).

[Scouse D]

Interventional cardiology?
 
in seriousness something like public health might be interesting? I considered this when there were no cardiology numbers. Law conversion degree and med neg?

I'll try and think of other things.

Cheers mate, will suggest

[monkoffunk]

I know a consultant anaesthetist coming up to retirement who didn't fancy just stopping and so trained as a counsellor. She wasn't hating anaesthesia, just wanted a change. Believe she did her training in her last few years, and then just kept it going part time when she retired as a consultant. Really enjoys it. Have another relative who was something high up in civil service or something like that who did pretty much the same thing. Certainly an area where as a GP she'll have the transferable skills.

[Oldmanmatt]

No no you're getting it all wrong.. since the advent of the internet, whatever choices you make in life mark you for categorisation so that you can be part of a group who's members can identify with one another and chat back n forth about it on web forums such as.. umm.. this one.
If you're frugal with money and drop out of work, you're part of the FIRE group. Identifying and naming these patterns of behaviour or thinking is seemingly an important part of the human experience.

Ah, I see.

I’m definitely not in the FIRE subset.

More the Frankly Unhinged Barely Afloat Retiree, or FUBAR...

[Coops_13]

The whole FIRE analogy is loosely based round the 4% rule (or 3% or 5%) whereby if you have x amount that you need per year to live off, you'd need 25x invested to never run out of money..

There does exist lean-FIRE (where you just have enough to make ends meet and can only sit around in the house all day) or fat-FIRE where you have enough passive income to travel and enjoy your life etc.

[seankenny]

I sometimes think that discussions of schemes such as FIRE by non-Americans gloss over the incredibly skewed distribution of income - and more importantly wealth - in the US today (as per Teaboy's post above). Even the "good old days" of the American middle class were, by our somewhat European standards, incredibly unequal. Roll forwards after half a century of gobsmacking reductions in wealth tax, and clearly the top tier of Americans have so much cash knocking about they can seed their offspring's ambitions fairly easily. I'm not quite so sure the same conditions exist in the UK for as many people, 0.1% of 330m is still quite a big number and perhaps quite a few people in the tier below who see how it can be done, even as they struggle to make it a reality.

[petejh]

Not sure I follow what you're trying to say there other than there's massive wealth inequality in the US and the UK.

By 'even in the tier below (0.1%) who can see how it's done but struggle to make it reality' .. are you saying that you think financial independence isn't realistic *even* for those annual earners in the top 1% or top 10%?   



Mods, any chance this could be split off into a separate thread ('Financial Independence', or something)

[seankenny]

Not sure I follow what you're trying to say there other than there's massive wealth inequality in the US and the UK.

Sorry if I wasn't clear - what I'm saying is that wealth inequality in the US is off the scale as compared to here, and has been for a long time. Clearly this means there is a segment of the population who are exempt from one or all of the typical American cripplers of college debt, health insurance tied to a decent job, good jobs being in very high rent cities. Without these I suspect it's much, much easier to become financially independent, aka dependent on a steady stream of investment returns.

By 'even in the tier below (0.1%) who can see how it's done but struggle to make it reality' .. are you saying that you think financial independence isn't realistic *even* for those annual earners in the top 1% or top 10%?   

Total guess work there on my part, though US wealth is *very* concentrated at the upper end of the distribution: of the top 10%, over half the wealth is held by the top 1% (going off 2010 figures as they're what I have to hand). I think it's the initial conditions (university debt and housing debt) that are the kicker, and that as time goes on an wealth concentration increases, there will be an increasing number of people with enough assets to give their kids that kind of start. All pure conjecture here and I'd happily be proved wrong.

Whether this is desirable, over and above Nibile's point above about surgeons-turned-ice cream vendors, I tend to see this as the creation of another generation of Mr Darcys, Mr Bingleys and Mr Bennets, with more than a dash of Melmottes making it all possible.

[AJM]

The whole FIRE analogy is loosely based round the 4% rule (or 3% or 5%) whereby if you have x amount that you need per year to live off, you'd need 25x invested to never run out of money..

There does exist lean-FIRE (where you just have enough to make ends meet and can only sit around in the house all day) or fat-FIRE where you have enough passive income to travel and enjoy your life etc.

Yeah, ultimately it feeds off whatever rate of dividends or other income you think you can earn such that you never have to touch the principal (or at least not for a really long time).

The challenge is a market crash - your asset values will probably fall and your income streams reduce at the same time - but if you don't trim your expenditure to match the income you're then selling the principal at the bottom of the market. I think this was something that bit a number of retirees drawing down their pensions in the last crash - the markets recovered, but by that point people had sold quite a lot of the pot to maintain their income so had less left to benefit from the recovery with.

[Sasquatch]

I sometimes think that discussions of schemes such as FIRE by non-Americans gloss over the incredibly skewed distribution of income - and more importantly wealth - in the US today (as per Teaboy's post above). Even the "good old days" of the American middle class were, by our somewhat European standards, incredibly unequal. Roll forwards after half a century of gobsmacking reductions in wealth tax, and clearly the top tier of Americans have so much cash knocking about they can seed their offspring's ambitions fairly easily. I'm not quite so sure the same conditions exist in the UK for as many people, 0.1% of 330m is still quite a big number and perhaps quite a few people in the tier below who see how it can be done, even as they struggle to make it a reality.

I don't think this is the case at all.  FIRE type concepts are being used and educating many non-wealthy young people who don't have safety nets.  Both of my sons included.  They're less concerned with the RE, and more with the FI. 

Unlike Europe, most Americans have no faith in our government to provide a safety net(for good reason), and as such most americans have no safety net of ANY kind.  There are few employee protections, low minimum wage, no government healthcare, and unemployment income is very limited.  They see this and it freaks them out, so they look for ways to diversify income and create their own safety net.  Given the general state of US politics and the resistance of 50% of the population to any kind of governmental interference, I think it's a smart call.  The next best option would be to get an education that is in demand(nursing for example) and immigrate to canada, UK, Aus, or New Zealand and attempt to get citizenship there.  But that's really hard to do. 

So how do they do that? Step one is actually getting educated on how income works, how investments work, how the US tax codes work, and how to maximize your personal income and minimize your expense.  Most 20 somethings I know are ignorant of most of this.  So if FIRE type ideas are educating them, then I say great. (as long as they're not paying into a ponzi for it). 

The issue for most people(i would guess both americans and europeans) is that we have a tendency to spend what is made. FIRe helps many people with this as it focuses on controlling spend to increase income.  I think that is a good thing and 90% of people would probably benefit from this... you don't have to go the fringe for this basic concept to be a good idea.