When I started the blog I debated what would make a good blog name. One of the words that was considered was “Extreme Early Retirement” but I found out that that word was “parked”. Early Retirement Extreme was free but also ERE made a better summary than EER.
Looking back, here a little over 3 years after starting the blog, the R part of that word has had some annoying side effects.
I found the crux of the matter is that people have different ideas and opinions about what retirement means. Retirement traditionally means the part of life that follows a lifetime of work. Retirement was for those workers who were physically and sometimes mentally disabled and could no longer continue working. The way the plant was set up meant that it could be replaced by a smaller version that worked as part of the machine.
As a strong financial system changes the family’s dependence on having children, some people who have managed to accumulate enough money are able to retire a few years earlier than normal. A person can stop working even if he is still able to continue working. This was the first paradigm shift.
Traditionally, families had one income which means they had enough money to save for a household.
Recently, the concept of retirement has started to change.
First, as families became truly poor, single-income families became two-income families. This now means that one person can retire while the other continues to work. This is the second paradigm shift. Here one person could retire several years or even more before another.
Some people have even been able to push the retirement age, that is, the age when they no longer work for money, down. This is called extreme early retirement. This is somewhat different from spending one’s money until retirement. This is very similar to the lifetime cash flows from an unamortized investment.
This is what I am talking about in this blog. This is the third paradigm shift. We have come a long way from the original definition of retirement: from someone who is too tired to work to someone who has enough money to not need to work.
This is why early retirement is a bad word.
Perhaps extreme financial independence would be a better word?
However, the problem here is that financial independence also has many different meanings. For me it means having enough money to cover (financially) all my needs for the rest of my life. However, for some it simply means having no debt; for some it means having enough money to buy anything they want.
These explanations are further removed from my intentions.
Another suggestion is “Private Wealth”. This is quite accurate, except that many people confuse “wealthy” (having money) with “wealthy” (spending money).
As a result, I am still stuck with Early Retirement Extreme. Just make sure you don’t get caught up in your interpretation of what it’s supposed to mean, okay?
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First posted 2010-12-12 20:48:47.
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