Case study of a retire-early story that didn’t go as planned. He attributes it to anomie, a breakup, and a health crisis. But it reads like he had just a little too much imagination to run the script as robotically as it seems to call for. ht
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About a decade ago, the early retirement crowd used to read/link to me but then seemed to decide I was too invested in the normie world. On my part I decided they were all acting dead and attempting to live in ways that a normally imaginative psyche would not allow.
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It’s not the financial narrative that’s implausible. It’s the accompanying psychological one. This guy did pretty well despite the breakup and health issues. He could have stayed retired at a pinch. It was the psychological plausibility that unraveled. He’s not dead enough.
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This crowd is kinda fascinating. There is significant overlap with the rationalists, except that they actually set up falsifiable life scripts (“if I retire early I will be happy and fulfilled”) and usually don’t theologize (“be less wrong and prepared for the rise of AGI”)
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Somebody should do an ethnography. This subculture is a great natural experiment comparable to George Vaillant’s famous longitudinal study.
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They’re not as cartoon as their writings make them seem. The couple I’ve met seem to have this idea that if they can solve money for once and for all, interesting freedoms and new dimensions will open up. Retirement as portal rather than flag, a consciousness elevating threshold.
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I think the script fails because money isn’t actually the active meaning-blocker constraint people think. If your best idea for a meaningful life purpose before early retirement is to write a bad sci-fi novel, retirement won’t magically elevate that purpose to a more sublime one.
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This point is key, but you seem to think it's impossible that people *can* actually find purpose in early retirement, which has not been my experience:
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Sounds like you're speaking from ignorance: just given all the people on the MMM forums, not to mention all the other FIRE blogs of people who have ER'd, it's neither unlikely nor rare. In fact, this guy's experience seems to be in the minority.

