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what happened here

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50015398)

LMAO tyft

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50015410)

AMC879

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11m ago

Profile Badge for the Achievement Top 1% Commenter Top 1% Commenter

I retired at 45 with $380k and a paid off $200k house and that is pushing it pretty good. Assuming you have the 40 credits needed for SS then I think you'll be ok but if you can work at all you may want to get a little income added in. Even just mowing the neighbors lawn for $100/mo or something like that. Most people will say you're crazy but I think you are pretty close to being able to make it work.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50015438)

OP

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1m ago

Btw, fwiw, for the record, I did attempt the approved route.

Economics degree. Bombed OCI.

Law degree. bombed OCI.

MBA. Bomb. They call it OCR in Business School btw.

LL.M. in sustainability, obtained shortly before the institutions decided sustainability meant PowerPoint decks, layoffs and replacing the lights in the lobby. 💣

Each one was presented as the missing key. Each opened onto another waiting room full of people holding the same key.

So, okay. I got the hint.

The market spoke. The universities spoke. The recruiters spoke. The firms declined to speak, which was perhaps the clearest communication of all. At some point a man must stop returning to the counter with another certificate and asking whether this one is sufficient proof that he may participate.

I am taking the ball and going home. Not metaphorically, either. The ball is $280,000. Home is a Trailer. The interest clears. The electricity remains on. There are games, though The State of AAA Gaming is grim. I asked the system four times what it wanted from me and brought back exactly what it named.

Economics. Law. Business. Sustainability.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.

Now it asks why I am no longer trying.

‘Nuff said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50017886)

This reads cool and all, but how much low wage work have you done? I've done quite a few low wage jobs - diner restaurant, sandwich shop, theme park, farm (as a picker), daycare, warehouse, and maybe some others I'm forgetting - and I've never had that happen with the file, the scrutiny, the whatever. Probably the only one I wouldn't do again in a pinch is daycare just because it's too much responsibility.

I never had to beat sales numbers or know products very well or any of that. I and everyone else who worked at those places below management level came in, did the work, clocked out, got our money and left. Occasionally you're asked to help out coming in when you weren't scheduled, but that's about it. No manager was really expecting anything above and beyond.

I know that this type of work can suck and everything has it's downsides, but I actually had more fun then at work goofing off with coworkers than I do now in my cushy, white collar job. And I liked being active, the momentum of waitressing or the farmwork was great. I wish I had that daily step count again. My sister is still a waitress and we compare/contrast sometimes and if it wasn't for the material pay difference, she definitely has the sweeter gig.

Of course, it's your life, but if I was in your situation, I'd definitely be getting a low wage job to double your available monthly income for a couple years. You seem one or two bad months away from this house of cards falling down, and that's a lot of stress to take on just to try and stick it to the man. I'd look for an active low wage job so I could kill two birds with one stone and get my step count in for the day at work.

loadedbook

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21h ago

I worked for a few retailers for many years, and I actually miss it sometimes. I enjoyed the work, and when I clocked out, I left it all behind without a care in the world until my next shift. I get it’s not for everyone, but it was great for my preferences.

9

u/Straight-Put-2142 avatar

Straight-Put-2142

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5h ago

Yeah definitely. Most of my family work service jobs (restaurants and grocery stores) and they always say they'd never want my office job. There's definitely pros and cons. It's unfortunate you can't live off that pay independently below manager level (at least my sister and Mom can't, they rely on spousal income), but it is what it is right now and OP won't change that by not taking a job.

I was with you until I read your reasoning for not doing a low wage job. It’s so unrealistically whiny that it makes you seem like a bullish.ter. Capitalizing “Bad Work” and “Bad Terms” is so pretentious that it makes me wonder if this is AI generated. But to answer your question, find a job immediately. You’re one minor expense from getting wrecked.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018050)

I understand the logic. The problem is that low-paid work is usually not low-stress work. It is often the opposite. The less they pay you, the more closely they watch you, the less discretion you have, and the more power they seem determined to exercise merely because they can. I have held those jobs. Sur La Table was one. You can beat the sales numbers, know the products, show up, do the work and make customers happy. It buys you a three-month honeymoon. A Reprieve. Then the scrutiny begins. A manager starts noting small things. A file appears. The tone changes. By month eleven, the axe falls or is made visible enough that you understand the arrangement. There is also a broader point. Every person willing to accept Bad Work on Bad Terms increases the supply of compliant labor and weakens the bargaining position of everyone else. The employer learns that the job need not be improved. Someone will take it. Someone always takes it. So I do not see a low-end part-time job as harmless entertainment with a paycheck attached. I see it as surrendering time, autonomy and dignity for modest money while helping preserve the very labor market that made the job so ignominious. I would rather spend less.

* * *

More cowgod retardese:

I understand your point. Money can run out. Inflation does not ask permission. Insurance rises. Property deteriorates. A car can become a four-figure event before breakfast. Interest rates change, tax rules change, and a plan that appears exact on a spreadsheet can be defeated by one bad year and an ordinary roof leak.

None of that is lost on me.

What I find strange is the proposed remedy. I post on a forum devoted to financial independence, and the answer is employment. Not a revision to the bond ladder. Not a larger repair reserve. Not a discussion of duration, principal preservation or spending flexibility.

“Get a job.”

There is something almost religious in it. The system has trained people to regard employment as the natural condition of an adult and freedom from it as a temporary irregularity requiring correction. A job may be degrading, unstable, badly paid and destructive of every useful hour in the day, but it is still treated as prudent. A man living quietly on assets must meanwhile defend himself like a failed state seeking another tranche from the IMF. That is the ignominy. Employment is granted a presumption of legitimacy that no other arrangement receives. No one asks the salaried man whether his manager is solvent, whether his industry will exist in ten years, whether his health can sustain another twenty years of commuting, whether his employer is quietly documenting him for removal, or whether the life he has built requires the uninterrupted goodwill of people who would replace him by Friday. His paycheck arrives twice a month, therefore the structure is considered sound. I have seen that structure from inside. I know what it is to have every hour owned, every small freedom converted into a policy question, every competent performance treated as the new minimum, every human relationship at work shadowed by the knowledge that one person is evaluating the other for continued access to rent money. The employee is told he is part of a team, then discovered to be a line item. He is thanked for his contribution, then walked out beside a cardboard box. This is called stability because the calendar invitation was recurring. And the lower the pay, the more complete the submission often becomes. The company does not merely purchase labor. It purchases posture, tone, punctuality, facial expression and the right to summon you into a back room because someone disliked the way you folded an apron. A modest wage is offered, but the employer behaves as though it acquired a controlling interest in the person.

I do not romanticize poverty. I do not believe a trailer and a Treasury ladder constitute invulnerability. I am reviewing the risks. I am adjusting where necessary. There may be occasions when income should be reinforced. There are ways to do that. I do not need to describe them all, and they need not involve an app, a uniform, a passenger in the Prius, or mowing “lawns” beneath the inspection of a man who has mistaken homeownership for feudal title. But that is secondary. The more interesting fact is how quickly people who claim to desire freedom become frightened when someone actually behaves as though freedom has value independent of consumption. They want financial independence, but only in a form that resembles employment from a distance. A larger portfolio. A nicer house. Consulting two days a week. A tasteful little side business. The same machinery remains intact. The manager disappears, but the need to prove usefulness survives. Perhaps that is why the advice arrives with such urgency. I am not merely underfunded in their eyes. I am committing a category error. I have treated time as the asset and money as the support structure, when the approved model is the reverse. I have reduced my wants until institutions lost leverage over me, and this is experienced by some as failure because the whole economy depends upon people expanding their wants faster than their assets, then presenting themselves for management in order to close the gap. So yes, I hear the warning. I may be wrong. A sequence of ordinary misfortunes may eventually force a change. I will prepare for that possibility without pretending that employment is a neutral refuge from risk. It is another risk, one that consumes the only principal that cannot be replenished. And here is the part no one seems to consider: perhaps the man in the trailer is not the one failing to understand the system. Perhaps he understands it too well. Perhaps he has seen that the grand machine is held together not by superior returns or rational incentives but by fear, status, habit and the terror of appearing unproductive before strangers. Perhaps the small budget is not evidence that he lost, but evidence that he located the minimum price of nonparticipation and paid it. Perhaps the $280,000 is not the remains of an unsuccessful life but the ransom demanded for the release of his remaining years. The people telling him to get a job imagine they are pointing toward safety. He sees them pointing back toward the place from which he escaped. He thanks them politely, checks the coupon payment, closes the browser, and goes outside on a Tuesday afternoon while the roads are empty.

If only they knew.

‘Nuff said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018060)

maybe its a Alabama thing but up here in the Northeast and in liberal cities, lower status, lower paid workers have it very good with all these non-salaried benefits like subsidized housing

meanwhile middle management is constantly working 60-80 hour weeks with no job security, lifestyle creep and taxes that eat 50% of their $200k salary to afford a box in MFH

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018100)

LJL at thinking youre some kind of Niezschean Prometheus in your ratty little trailer jerking off to Baldur's Gate

you're just a balding loser who has decided to be a non-entity. youre also really unhealthily and emotionally invested within a 108IQ pseudo intellectual worldview to validate your life's choices

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018141)

In any healthy society you'd be socially shamed into getting a job or shunned and banished as the town hermit

Just like the Bible said, I put my fucking video games down when I left high school because I chose not to pedestalize my weaknesses.

The verse says a lot about why you still have a naive, childish view of the world ("the Betters!!! the Game is Rigged" "Work is Demeaning!!!")

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018255)

https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists/comments/xbvcmq/thats_right_dad_im_getting_an_mba_and_theres/

here he clearly wants to get a job. he just keeps failing at it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018337)

CallmeIshmael913

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1d ago

I'm in a strangely similar situation. I spend about 600 a month, but it can be 1000 a month if I ball out on something extravagant like a power steering pump.

I...love this lifestyle. I have peace. I read library books, and do my hobbies (I'll sell them to pay for new materials).

I might just recommend contract work. I'll be working 60 days at a hunting camp, and earning around 10k, which is essentially my yearly budget. I'm the last millennial model year before they rolled out the Gen z's, so I missed the housing window, but I'm saving to build my own.

I'd just say maybe an emergency fund of 4ish months, and a plan for what to do in 6-7 years.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5884899&forum_id=2~#50018546)