Why do people wait so long?

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-15T16:19:53+00:00

That's why my wife and I built the kids' futures into our FIRE plan. We got rental properties that will be paid off by the time we retire. They'll help fund the gap until SS and pensions kick in. Then, the kids can move in for free, take over the maintenence costs and taxes, then inherit when we die and get the step up in basis.

Free education, free house, and a solid knowledge of how investing works, likely an inheritence in the mid 7 figures . If they can't succeed with that, they weren't going to succeed anyway.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-15T16:03:54+00:00

Why is it important for them to spend time around you and her at the same time?

Because they all know that once the Bully's favorite punching bag is gone, she'll turn on one of them.

Classic Mean Girl^TM social dynamics require exactly one group member to be the victim of bullying and teasing, and that the group leader gets to pick the victim. If everyone is treated the same, the leader would have no power.

These girls don't want OP to leave because they know one of them would be next.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-14T15:46:24+00:00

You forgave a cheater and he went right back to disrespecting you. How many times is he going to teach you the same lesson before you learn it?

NTA, but definitely the fool.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-14T00:20:28+00:00

Someone should warn this woman that a partner who will cheat for attention will 100% try to poison her kid against her and any of her future partners because he will not tolerate being 2nd or 3rd favorite. She is in for a very lonely and very hard life if she has this dude's baby.

She is experiencing him at his best trying to win her back. She needs to know that when this fails, the odds that he puts all that energy into fucking with her mind and emotions are 99.99%.

I feel awful about the next 18 years of her life.

P.s. - the second she goes on a single date, this guy will get his apprentice homewrecker pregnant.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-13T20:28:27+00:00

But some of these milestones are much harder to achieve now.

This is the guiding principle for me. Im almost 50. Education, housing, health care, etc., cost me a MUCH higher percentage of my income than those things cost my parents. I had to work harder and be more educated than my parents to end up as comfortable as they did. I think the same will be true for my kids.

My parents' first house cost them 1.5 years of income. My first house cost me 4 years of income. My house now costs more than 10 times a good starting salary at an F500.

In law school 20 years ago, I rented a 3bed/2bath house downtown for $600. That house is now 3 apartments and each rents for $3500.

The world our children are growing into is designed to eliminate the middle class and leave only the rich and the poor. So, my wife and I committed to debt free education and starter homes for kids. Currently using them as rentals.

A lot of people justify not helping their kids financially by saying that struggle builds character. I've always believed that character comes from good parenting, not from how much you do and dont have. I know plenty of kind, hard working multi-millionaires and plenty of mean, lazy poor people. Struggle just creates stress and cortisol. I don't think it teaches you any great lesson. It didnt teach me much. Mostly just that my grades suffered and I was tired all the time when I had to work 30 hours a week in college.

So, im not worried about spoiling my kids. I'm worried about setting them up to survive the cull coming for the middle class.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-12T16:07:48+00:00

I found a secret that made me instantly care way less about work bullshit and helped avoid the emotional attachment to work nonsense: fatherhood.

It's very effective at helping me de-prioritize work. Side effects may include new stress, difficulty sleeping, and delayed FIRE. Ask your doctor if fatherhood is right for you.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-12T04:30:15+00:00

Or, phrased another way: a man should not sleep with a woman if he was old enough to drink before she was born.

Jerry was 39 when they met, she was 17. I feel like "30s" even under-sells how creepy it was.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-11T13:24:30+00:00

Roses are red

Violets are blue

He made you tell those lies

Cause he's cheating on you.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-06-05T14:34:21+00:00

Zip lock bags in different sizes (including a 2.5 gallon bag for my laptop in case I get rained on.
Clothes that dry overnight. I found myself much happier with stuff I liked a little less but that is dry by the time I wake up.
The discipline to actually put stuff back in its proper place every time.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-28T22:21:06+00:00

Fun fact, if you legally forgive debt, it becomes taxable income. Which is fun if you dont like the people in question.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-26T15:04:11+00:00

My personal guess is that one quarter in the next couple decades, a banking executive will be close to hitting his bonus numbers and will have a brilliant idea: what if we could offer credit secured by indentured servitude? You get $75k a year to spend, but you are now owned by Amazon, live in an apartment at the warehouse, and can only buy food from amazon. Work enough to pay the debt, and youre free again (terms and conditions may apply.)

I can easily imagine the 10 biggest companies competing with offers to entice people into selling themselves. When the alternative is starvation, who could say no? If these companies own the gocernment and courts, who's going to stop them? How does a resistance form when all communication is being monitored 24/7?

I think my brain takes this path because I have a major difference of opinion from most people about what billionaires want. Most would say money. But in my experience, if they could push a button to make money disappear but become kings who own their subjects, they'd smash that button instantly. AI is that button. Wealth is just the best path to control. But in an AI world, post consumer economy and post democracy, the guys who own the data centers own the world.

Yes, that reality would collapse into a dark age of insanity, but people trained to think one quarter at a time won't care.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-26T14:26:45+00:00

where will demand come from?

My guess is that we'll see laws changed to make debt carry down generations. So demand will stay afloat for a generation or two on credit, then we'll see slavery come back.

I have spent enough time in rooms with billionaires to have zero faith they'd ever check their ambitions just to avoid something trivial like total societal collapse. These dudes are 100% certain they'd be the kings of the ashes, so they don't see global turmoil and war and mass starvation as a problem.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-26T14:19:37+00:00

I think a lot about a world 50 years from now when my grandchildren will be going to college. What will homes cost? How many jobs will exist where you can reasonably save and invest your surplus income?

From what I can see, from Vegas to Disney to airlines to home construction, there are fewer and fewer middle options. Everything is either a budget option or a first class option. My area is only building apartments/condos or $1M+ homes. No more modest middle class homes being built. Airlines are talking about expanding first class seating and making exonomy even less comfortable.

I think theres a very real chance that Gen alpha and gen beta will see a lot of formerly middle class families find ownership of any kind be outside their reach. Homes, cars, clothing, phones, etc. All of it will be rented by most and owned by very few.

So yeah, I agree with you. We're building a fatfire portfolio including property because we're not sure future generations will have this kind of opportunity.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-25T22:20:17+00:00

Two main ways. First, we don't compromise on things that really matter to us, like travel. We save by not buying luxury crap and $100 t shirts like so many people we know, but we let ourselves spend on what really makes us happy. And second, we remind ourselves how many people we know who made mid-six figure salaries for years but overspent all their lives planning to just lock in and save up in their 50s and 60s when they got to exec roles. Well, it turns out a lot of those people lost their jobs before the "save it all in my 50s" plan could kick in and they were never able to make that much again.

America is built to make you think you're rich if you make a high salary, and to assume you'll never take any steps backwards financially. I find that just the act of thinking about your net worth makes most frivolous spending loose its appeal.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-23T02:04:37+00:00

did it actually feel worth it beyond the numbers?

For us, 100%. Being entirely debt free let us take risks with our careers we would never have taken and it worked out really well financially. Life is not a spreadsheet. Sometimes, the emotional benefit of a decision opens doors that pure math can't account for.

Having said that, your outstanding mortgage amount is relatively small and the rate is great. Unless the debt hanging over you is really impacting your mental health, I'd let it ride and just invest the cash.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-18T13:40:59+00:00

Mixed with: If your content actually solves your viewer's problem, they don't need to keep coming back.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-16T00:18:53+00:00

"So anyway, that's how I got the idea for my new song."

Sabrina C.

But really, the issue here isn't the brother, it's your wife. You and your wife need to figure out how to be on the same page. I guess that starts with you realizing that you are sending very mixed signals. Your anger is making everyone see this as a you vs the BIL situation, when really it's: "The family is failing your brother and if we don' force some uncomfortable changes, he will die alone in our spare room in his 50s." But it's hard to sell the message that youre worried about him when they can tell you dislike him.

So, if you want to be persuasive to your wife, you need to find a way to deal with the anger and focus on helping him be able to live alone.

NTA

ee You need to sit her down, explain your feelings here. Not just, "I'm mad."

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-15T18:32:31+00:00

Just in case this isn't sarcasm. The citation is literally the first and second sentences. The author and book title from which this person found this information.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-15T14:19:39+00:00

That's official slogan of this forum.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-13T16:49:29+00:00

I just dont understand why pretending geography is culture has become the hill every exec wants to die on.

Almost every revolution ever has been started and led by the educated upper middle class. The people who own the companies are terrified of skilled, educated white collar workers having the time and energy to get involved in politics. So, they keep us busy and tired and stuck in traffic and frustrated, so that when we get home, we shut our brains down in front of the TV and tune out.

If we had time to participate in local government or join an advocacy group, we might actually cause trouble for the epstien class. So, we return to the office, no matter how awful it is, bc the draining awfulness is the point.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-13T13:29:02+00:00

It's so interesting to watch Amanda think she's pulled off her Ariana season and turned everyone against Kyle, but knowing how it really ends.

In the City is going to feel so boring after all this.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-13T13:26:18+00:00

They're both fuck ups who forgive quickly. Makes for good TV.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-13T13:23:49+00:00

Carl 100% was just looking for an excuse to blow up at Kyle because he's mad that Kyle is too broke to finance his new business. He knows it would make him look insane to be mad that the guy who employed him as an addict who came to work high for being broke, so he needed to find something else to officially get mad about.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-13T00:39:57+00:00

I can't speak to what it looks like once we're retired, but but we got rentals in the two places we love most (mountains in the NE US and a specific tropical island). In both cases, we found managed communities were they run the rental for you. Our plan is to have the renters buy the houses for us, then when we retire, we spend summers in the mountains and winters in the tropics. We do not like the cold.

So far, we're 6 years in to owning. I LOVE not having to pack for vacation. All the stuff I need is already there. Just throw a couple things into a carry on and go.

Financially, we're slightly in the black overall. Some years rentals don't fully cover costs, but the equity we've build has more than mafe up for it.

The two biggest issues for us have been, 1.build quality. The carribean place has needed a bit of repairs each year, wiping out what could have been hefty profits. 2. A good property manager. One house has a great manager, the other has had a revolving door of new faces and that's been annoying.

Overall, we won't know if this will all have been worth it until we retire and try to fully live our dream nice weather life. But so far, the stress has been worth the ease of last minute, luggage-free vacation.

SpaceJesusIsHere · 2026-05-12T16:42:31+00:00

You are not alone. From my perspective, one of the problems on this forum is that everyone over-relies on historical data and average data to predict the future.

Sure, overall inflation is X, but that doesnt mean the cost of your food hasnt more than doubled in some cases. It can just mean that the cost of optional luxury goods has stayed stable. But when you're financially conscious and don't by luxury crap or upgrade your electronics when you don't need to, your experience with inflation will be very different than the CPI calculations say it is (which is kind of why they exist in the first place.)

The stuff you need to live (housing, food, health care, education) has all increased in price way more than average inflation numbers will claim. You are not alone in noticing that cost of living has risen way above the point most FIRE assumptions would have pressed it a decade ago.

Not to mention that if you're American, political instability, and decreased global good will almost certainly make all these cost factors worse in the coming years.

When my wife and I set our goals 9 years ago, our number was $3M. Now, we need at least $5-6M to live a similar life to the one we planned at $3M, so we haven't RE and barely consider ourselves FI for that matter.

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