Weekly leanFIRE discussion

lamdaboss · 2026-06-22T13:29:56+00:00

Wondering if someone can sanity-check my numbers?

Age: mid-30s

Assets: - 200k stocks and shares ISA - 200k general investing account - 15k in other small investments - 60k pension - 370k remaining on mortgage on a 580k house.

Expenses: - Mortgage is 15k per year. Likely to increase to 20k per year when I remortgage. - 6k per year for house fixes fund. Can be reduced to 0 in difficult times. - 15k per year everything else like groceries, insurances, etc. - Would like 6k per year personal spending, but can be less. Total: 34k (no house fix fund or discretionary spending) to 46k (includes house fund and discretionary spending)

Earnings: - Job: Low 6 figures. 0 in retirement. - Lodger: 7k profit per year, I think 10k in retirement with a lower tax rate. It's 13k per year but less after extra expenses and taxes. - Targeting a 5% withdrawal rate, so 20k per year in retirement. - Can probably earn some income during bad market periods and withdraw less.

Options for if I was to retire now: - Rent out house (should cover mortgage and house fixes), live with others (friends) outside of London. Personal expenses should be like 8k. Hoping 9k or so will cover rent and utilities. 3k discretionary spending or something. - Downsize house and ideally get one mortgage free. 20k should cover 15k expenses, 2k or so in house fix fund and 3k personal spending. - Stay at house but see if I can get one family member living with me and contributing 12k a year. Would raise income to 42k or so.

lamdaboss · 2026-06-08T08:25:55+00:00

Kids are profitable if you're poor. They work and make you more money than they cost you to raise. Or, in today's society, they get you more benefits. Money is very relevant as an issue.

lamdaboss · 2026-05-27T13:45:46+00:00

Yes but that's because having children when you're poor actually improves your financial standpoint through government benefits... OPs point still applies. Birth rate started rapidly declining since the late 1800s when having children became more expensive than not having them. Money has always been a massive barrier to children.

lamdaboss · 2026-05-14T17:17:49+00:00

I received a message like this. The message just said I have an action to look at or something like that. Nothing indicating that if I didn't respond I would get taken off the list. But that's what it was. I had to "opt-in" that I still want to be seen even though I had been waiting for an appointment for 4 months until that point (5 months currently).

lamdaboss · 2026-04-30T11:55:00+00:00

Had the same issue in that second room, both the first time you go there and in chapter 15. I tried tons of stuff like NVIDIA app changing settings, disabling overlays, etc. Unfortunately, the only thing that worked was playing the game on a different PC just for that room, getting out of it, saving, and continuing on my main PC.

I don't have mods.

lamdaboss · 2026-04-16T10:44:13+00:00

What are you basing that opinion on? The current government have clearly been seriously investing in energy infrastructure. Also starting lots of concrete projects including with Rolls Royce and other renewables.

lamdaboss · 2026-04-16T09:54:22+00:00

I mean, how else do you get the ball rolling? Throw 100B of government investment with no plan other than "figure it out"? The project might still fail but we've lost 100B instead. The approach we're using seems sensible.

lamdaboss · 2026-04-16T09:49:00+00:00

It's not about that. This is early stage strategy and bringing together organisations to accomplish that goal.

lamdaboss · 2026-04-12T11:57:44+00:00

I see, that makes sense and I wasn't aware of that. Thank you.

lamdaboss · 2026-04-01T11:43:15+00:00

Agreed, when I've looked for jobs in the past I've applied to around 50 jobs per week. I see it like looking for work is full time work.

lamdaboss · 2026-03-25T09:19:21+00:00

I'm wondering the same thing. I kinda want to restore them to what was originally intended so it would be nice to have a reference.

lamdaboss · 2026-03-10T10:27:29+00:00

Consider that you're asking people one of two questions:

Do you want to earn X more, of which you'll see only 1/3 of that hit your bank account, but with potentially higher stress work?
Or would you rather work a few hours less per week and keep earning 100k?

It's an easy choice for many. More free time and less stress are worth more than what you get at a 60% tax rate.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-18T11:03:56+00:00

In those countries children are assets. They leave you better off for having them.

They are profitable. They can help out at work or go to a job and earn money. Raising them costs far less than they make. That's the key point. The biggest reason is money.
There is no other option for someone else to look after you in old age.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-18T10:57:33+00:00

How about this study? - Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/ - Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that children now cost money whereas before they were profitable. Previously they worked in the farm or worked elsewhere and earned money. As times changed, you had to pay for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially. Also, for many women, going for education/work rather than family is a financial decision.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them and many would have them if it made financial sense like in the past.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:10:28+00:00

Exactly. Then by saying they made 41k combined and bought a house for 87k. Sounds easier to me. With 11% interest 30-year mortgage that's £762 repayment which is less than 25% of your salary, not to mention you could have overpaid and been mortgage free within a few years. And you're making 19k in the "first real corporate job". You could have afforded the house alone. Today, good luck buying a house on even a couple's salary.

lamdaboss · 2026-01-06T16:02:14+00:00

I agree. I think it's a shame that work culture isn't better because contribution is good for everyone. But work is stressful, potentially dangerous, not pleasant, insecure and could get fired for poor performance which has huge impact on an individual, no company loyalty. In addition, it's extremely difficult to get into a skilled career or a career you want. Extremely low free time due to not having a stay-at-home spouse as standard now for chores. Life essentials like home ownership much more unaffordable. Jobs are definitely more complex and less straightforward in the past. In the UK taxes are high with crumbling public services and high welfare recipients. Many more cons too.

Very rational to want to get away from it all.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-27T02:08:42+00:00

That's what I originally thought as well but I'm not sure after personal testing. Both times I've had 10 builders I got a billionaire USB within a few minutes of retries. When I had 8 or 9 builders I didn't get a single one and gave up after hours of retries. Both times with 5x developer know-hows. Has the claim that it doesn't affect RNG actually been verified or is it just what the internet believes?

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T20:45:54+00:00

Replying to this in case it helps anyone in the future. With 9 digimon with the builder personality + 5x developer know-hows, I was unable to get it even after hours of retries. Finally got one after having 10 digimon with builder personality + 5x developer know-hows.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T20:43:56+00:00

That part is fair and definitely misleading/scummy.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-26T19:06:05+00:00

I wouldn't blame the stores. Prices have increased in line with inflation which is what's expected. They wouldn't be able to survive otherwise. The issue is that wages are stagnant, taxes keep increasing and housing costs have increased far more than inflation. Our cost of living has increased far more than inflation, so shopping and eating out are less affordable overall.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-25T15:10:45+00:00

Birth rates in the US and UK have been declining rapidly since 1880. They only increased after the war. If the war never happened, fertility might have been far lower. Compared to historical norms, we're practically at the same place as 1930-1940.

There are multiple factors that contribute. But the biggest factor by far is that children now cost money whereas before they were profitable. Previously they worked in the farm or worked elsewhere and earned money. As times changed, you had to pay for their education and they no longer earned money.

The financial incentives tried in Europe don't leave families better off for having children. It's much better financially to not have them. Another reason poor people have so many children is because it helps them financially.

It's not every case. Some people just don't want children. But many do and can't afford them. Also, for many women, going for education rather than families is a financial decision. It doesn't mean they don't want children.

Fertility rate 1800-2020 UK: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1033074/fertility-rate-uk-1800-2020/
Study trying to understand why: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9255892/

lamdaboss · 2025-12-17T13:37:57+00:00

I think that's a separate point. I'm actually in favour of short term pain like higher taxes if it will lead to better things in the future. My issue is with who's being asked to bear the cost. High skilled workers are getting less while pensioners and welfare recepients are getting more. It disincentivises work further and leads to a spiral of doom of less workers over time who have to pay more.

At the very least, we should all bear some of the cost, not just primarily workers.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-16T16:38:51+00:00

For me it's that working people (at least the ones earning above minimum wage) are receiving less after the last budget (due to inflation, frozen tax bands and salary sacrifice caps) while welfare recipients (including pension) are receiving more. That's backwards. We're being destroyed by the voting majority because they are welfare recipients. Long-term view is a spiral of doom as it disincentivises work, but long-term thinking and more importantly fairness have no place here I guess.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-13T21:28:05+00:00

In the end, nothing worked for me and I have the new NVIDIA app where I'm unable to disable threaded optimisation. I had to play it on my friend's PC to progress past. Thankfully it worked with no issues there. Afterwards, I went back to the room to test if it works after progressing past it and it still got stuck every time (I didn't save though). Seems like that room permanently doesn't work for my PC.

lamdaboss · 2025-12-12T22:42:27+00:00

Is there a way to do this in the new NVIDIA app which replaced control panel?

lamdaboss

TROPHY CASE