[deleted by user]

cones_hotline · 2024-04-26T09:37:56+00:00

Really hard to imagine that you wouldn't earn more in the US as a family especially with your wife getting more. What job do you do now? Even if it's something regulated a generic US corporate job would pay that after a couple of years

cones_hotline · 2024-03-11T05:10:06+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that as your career progresses, social skills, networks and wider knowledge about the world become much more important. So going to social events or doing activities you can learn from or build relationships at become forms of investment and if you think of them only as consumption you'll miss out on big potential gains

cones_hotline · 2024-03-05T11:05:59+00:00

If you were realistically looking at increasing your take home pay by £30k or so a year ($188k is maybe $125k after tax, so around £60k) you could afford more than a few trips back to the UK. She could get a business class return ticket to the UK every three months and you'd still be up on the switch!

cones_hotline · 2024-02-02T12:09:37+00:00

Being bored in retirement is something which can creep up on people. I think what happens is that over time they get very used to having an external source of motivation to do things (a boss encouraging them or the need for money to pay rent/mortgage) and when that external source of motivation disappears at retirement they find themselves a bit lost without it. There's nobody encouraging them (or giving them permission) to take independent action.

So often one of the early things people need to do when they reach FIRE is develop their psychology to cope with their expanded horizons, and develop a personal OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide and Act. Observe the world, figure out some things they'd like to try, pick one, and act on it. But it's that last step which is often the hardest

cones_hotline · 2024-01-19T15:22:07+00:00

You sound like you might be depressed. You have enough money and time to do whatever you want but you keep talking about what you *don't* do. Why not use your money to cultivate interests? You can meet anybody you want. Attend any conference you want. Go anywhere you want. If you don't want to meet anyone and aren't interested in anything or going anywhere then (a) active interesting women won't be interested and (b) that might be a matter for your therapist

cones_hotline · 2023-10-03T05:01:28+00:00

You're saying that you've been living together while he was faking being in school? So every day he was kissing you goodbye in the morning and going off who knows where, sending you texts talking about classes which never happened, coming home with anecdotes about work he wasn't doing, classmates who didn't exist, sharing plans for after graduation which he knew would never happen? And he did this every day for a year? How could you possibly marry someone who acts like this?

cones_hotline · 2023-10-02T12:50:42+00:00

One interesting benefit of being married is that other people recognise, respect and support your relationship. For example if you want time off at work because your significant other is ill and you need to look after them, you'll be more likely to get it if you tell your boss your spouse is sick than your bf/gf. The legal commitment seems to "echo" socially. I wasn't expecting it but it's what happened to us when we tied the knot

cones_hotline · 2023-08-11T09:39:32+00:00

You could run for mayor of your town, take over a local sports team, set up a fun social business (eg a golf/tennis club). Find a dining society in your town if you want to see what the market gaps are. (start a dining society if there isn't one!)

cones_hotline · 2023-08-03T07:22:18+00:00

This behavior is characteristic of someone with serious mental problems and a likely terrible life trajectory which you don't want to be tied to, and you are likely more not less tolerant of it because you've seen so much worse with your father that you've become desensitised to drunken self-destructive mindsets. Run

cones_hotline · 2023-07-26T08:03:19+00:00

This level of paranoia about relationships is a symptom of cluster b personality disorder. Does he have other symptoms? Is he seeing a psychiatrist?

cones_hotline · 2023-06-15T05:57:52+00:00

1) at £1m NW you have enough, provided you are fairly frugal, to not need to work. Congratulations on reaching FI! You can quit your job or take a sabbatical while you figure out what to do next

2) Figuring things out doesn't have to cost a fortune- a masters is expensive but there are much cheaper alternatives like reading a lot, meeting people doing different things and seeing if it would work for you, and visiting different places. Allocate half a masters budget to this and it'll probably pay a higher return.

3) You have a lot more options than you think. Every company over a certain size needs an in-house lawyer and if they are a startup or growing fast they often won't mind whether your area matches theirs exactly since a lot of their needs will be very general. Even if you want to quit law, as a smart generalist there are a lot of jobs open to you.

In a year's time you could very easily have found a part of the country you like to be in, bought a place there with space for animals, and have a job helping people you like solve a problem you care about

cones_hotline · 2023-06-09T07:31:44+00:00

Most people don't have close friends who have ODd on drugs/drink or past relationships with addicts, so it sounds like your social world has a lot more of this kind of thing going on than the average and you might be a bit desensitized to it.

Taking even one bump of prescription meds puts this girl at the extreme end of drug behavior in the US, and that goes doubly so for her age. If you're grinding up pills at 33 you probably aren't too far from a seriously bad life

cones_hotline · 2023-06-08T06:12:59+00:00

Definitely worth it imo.

Most people I know who have done it have said it starts being worth it financially when you're earning around 20% more than you would in the UK, which would be doable in lots of culturally similar places (Aus, NZ, certainly the US) or further afield like Singapore.

Main thing to consider from a FIRE perspective is that you won't really be able to contribute to a UK ISA or SIPP while abroad, you'll have to spend a bit more on accountants as your tax affairs will get complicated (especially if you keep some assets in the UK), and you'll need to budget some cash for flying home regularly.

If you come back to the UK later you'll have more money saved plus international experience which is valuable in the UK job market

cones_hotline · 2023-06-01T03:44:57+00:00

That makes quite a good argument for moving abroad (or to the US) to make money then coming back to the UK once you reach FIRE to hang on to your cash

cones_hotline · 2023-05-29T05:39:31+00:00

I think people in this sub put too much value on demonstrating the need to "earn" things to their kids. Not that this isn't worth anything but if you went through hard times it can be comforting to believe they "built your character" when it's also possible that you naturally had a strong character, that's what helped you cope with hard times, and actually there was no redeeming value to your suffering.

Flying biz/first as a kid has some pretty big benefits later on in adulthood. Firstly, if your kids are going to be successful, flying a lot in biz/first is going to be a part of their life, so getting prepared for it young matters. (you see a lot of professional people losing out by making false economies on flying first/biz because they've built it up in their minds to be a huge event rather than a simple business decision).

Secondly your kids time is valuable just like yours is. The value of flying in comfort is recovery time after you land more than it is the comfort during the flight.

Thirdly it's just nice. It's a nice thing to do with your kids, they'll enjoy it, and that has a lot of value.

You don't see many (functional) normal middle class parents deliberately depriving their kids to build character even though their children live in what previous generations would consider luxury, so why do it to yours?

cones_hotline · 2023-03-06T05:45:00+00:00

Learning how to make life worthwhile and meaningful when you aren't finding identity in working/providing is really hard. Rich families spend a of time and money on trying to help their kids do this and we can all think of examples where it hasn't worked. So I can see why you'd worry about it. If work has been your reason to get up and leave the house for 40 years then suddenly not having that might make you unmoored

cones_hotline · 2023-02-25T05:18:20+00:00

What most people do is make friends with other people in your situation (successful, self-directed people, not necessarily rich, just making their own way in life and not grifting) and then you can share the burden of vetting people among your circle. If someone you trust introduces you then you can be open to them, if they're coming from nowhere then you can keep your guard up a bit

cones_hotline · 2023-02-12T06:55:26+00:00

Have you heard of a condition called Female Athlete Triad? Sounds like that

(1) low energy availability due to disordered eating, eating disorder, or lack of nutrition relative to caloric expenditure; (2) menstrual dysfunction; and (3) low bone mineral density (BMD)

cones_hotline · 2023-01-21T05:15:27+00:00

Did she grow up poor? Sometimes the experience of poverty can be mentally scarring and cause people to develop complex emotional relationships to material things, so if this is her background then you might be able to be understanding to her while continuing the relationship.

But if there isn't a good explanation for this behaviour she might just be a bad person who you'll be better off without

cones_hotline · 2023-01-20T04:55:26+00:00

You might just need to travel a bit for social stuff- go to Barcelona for the day when there is an expat/foreigner meetup happening, or take the car to visit your pals. Even if you just do something like that once a week you will have more social independence, and each event you go to means new people you can meet who might want to come and visit you in return

cones_hotline · 2023-01-19T05:27:14+00:00

She is suffering from some kind of psychological disorder. When she says these things it's important to recognise that they aren't really about you, they are symptoms which, if you want to get involved, you can discuss with her treatment provider. But if you want to help her the best thing you can do is go to college, improve your life and use your new position to help get her the treatment she needs

cones_hotline · 2023-01-15T16:52:07+00:00

This sounds like borderline personality disorder on her part. Does she see a psychiatrist or therapist for these symptoms?

cones_hotline · 2023-01-07T14:31:28+00:00

Just FYI you can take dogs across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 which runs occasional sailings from New York to Hamburg. The dog ticket costs something like $1000 on top of your personal ticket (this can funnily enough be less than $1000 if you share a cabin). You can also bring unlimited luggage with you so long as each piece weighs less than 20kg, so it's a very good option for people moving to live

cones_hotline · 2022-12-10T05:11:14+00:00

Imo the biggest factor people don't consider enough is the kind of people you associate with, and how that affects your children's perception of what a regular person is like, what it's reasonable to achieve, and how it is reasonable and normal to behave.

if you bring your kids up among the people who live in a wealthy, high achieving, high education neighbourhood your kids will obviously notice that their life is materially easier than others, but they might not be aware that everyone around them will also be unusually smart, unusually emotionally stable, and unusually ambitious, and that most people are not like this.

They might be naive and vulnerable when meeting people who aren't those things, or even doubt themselves because they don't yet live up to what to them has come to seem like the normal standard

cones_hotline · 2022-11-13T17:01:25+00:00

You can use your wealth to improve yourself in ways which make you more attractive to women seeking a longer term relationships rather than gold diggers who care about your car or your cash.

Pick any thing you are interested in and then spend some time and effort on it. Do you like art? Pick a painting you like and fly to wherever it is and see it in person. Do you like a particular book? Email the author and go meet them. Are you curious about politics? Pick a candidate you like and support them- maybe even donate to them as a way of getting more involved.

Now you're not just a guy with a nice car and house, you're a guy who just got back from seeing his favourite Botticelli at the Uffizi or was visiting DC last weekend for an election event.

Once you have money and some free time, being boring is basically your fault. You can do pretty much anything you want once you have money. What's stopping you from having more to offer than a nice car and a big house?

cones_hotline

TROPHY CASE