randomguy wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:53 pm
JustinR wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:10 pm
FIREchief wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 2:51 pmA new and growing trend is "I'm sick of my stable, high paying job because somebody is mean to me; should I just quit?" Probably a sign of changing demographics.....
Actually more people in this generation will FIRE than any before it due to exactly that mindset. They don't take
[poor --admin LadyGeek] work conditions or slaving away until 67 for granted like their predecessors did. They know there's more to life than that so they'll work smart to get it. They have options and the tools to achieve it. Haven't you heard the cliche about millennials hopping jobs every two years to drastically increase their pay? Thats a really common thing and it works.
More people will FIRE because there are more people. The percentage probably hasn't changed. The term FIRing is new. The concept goes back a long ways (at least to the 80s and I wouldn't be shocked it it was the 1780s:)). And I think it is more accurate to say you will "HEAR" a lot more about it. 20 years ago the people that retired early didn't have blogs and the like to shout it out to the world. It is very, very easy to pay attention to the people shouting loudly (i.e. All those FIRE people who are WORKING on blogs
). The media in general is good at taking small trends and trying to make them big. The internet takes that and allows much smaller subgroups to meet up and form echo chambers.
There also have been people quiting stable high paying jobs forever also. Again you just didn't hear about it if it was outside of your immediate circle of friends 20 years ago. And I remember when I started work about how it was Gen X that was job skipping every 2 years with no loyalty.
Heck I bet if we had all of Socrates writing we would learn about how the new generation just wasn't dedicated and keep going from one master to another because they were impatient.
Now access to cheap investment is pretty new. The concept (for better or worse. All those people that retired thinking 6% was safe were right most of the time and in their ignorance they didn't worry about 30% risk of ruin they were running) of the 4% rule is pretty new.
FIREchief wrote: ↑Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:36 pm
LOL. You've given me the best entertainment of the day. Work (smart) away!!
People have changed jobs to bump their pay for decades. Do you really thing this generation invented this? Glad you have the options and tools. We've always had the ability to acquire tools (i.e. valuable skills) and options (i.e. the ability to sell those skills to the highest bidder). Has anything really changed? (other than some cry babies quiting jobs, not as part of a strategy to find the best option but instead because somebody was mean to them)
Also, see my post immediately prior in this thread. I have a lot of respect for many in the "current" generation.
I think you're vastly underestimating the difference between this generation and the previous. The amount of information and resources we have today is several magnitudes beyond what the previous generation had. Thanks to FB, Linkedin, Glassdoor, etc. people have access to salary and benefits info, recruiters, employee reviews, connections on a national scale. Recruiters can find you by doing a simple search and message you instantly. You have a friends list of hundreds of connections that can help you find the next job. I have no idea what older people would have done...check their newspaper classified section or send telegrams to every company? I'm gonna guess most people were stuck in their local area because their reach of information was so low.
Investing is incredible accessible now. Any 18 year old can find the Bogleheads forum (because someone mentioned it on Reddit) and learn how to invest immediately on their own. Anyone can learn how to FIRE by reading a few blogs. They can maximize their credit card rewards by checking a few things online. Some older people may have figured out job hopping, but think about how today hundreds of people knowing the instant you switched jobs because you simply changed your work status and now everyone is exposed to that concept until it's the norm. Is being FI the norm? Not nearly yet, but one day it could be.
Thanks to social networks, blogs, feeds, if you're online you can just stumble onto information you might not have even been looking for. You can learn about investing or FIRE even if none of your friends told you about it. In the 90s you may have never found out something if your circle of 10 total friends never mentioned it.
Anyways, sorry for derailing the OP! Yes, a one-fund is something anybody can do. Imagine how someone would find the information in this thread in the 90s. Probably wouldn't.