This show is an interview with Jacob from The Early Retirement Extreme book and blog.
Jacob is a former physicist who developed a plan that can help anyone, regardless of income, industry, or background, from where they are to financial independence in 5 years by learning to free themselves from the earn/pay cycle and substituting use of skills for purchasing everything.
Jacob’s book is truly one of my absolute favorite books on personal finance. It’s radically different from mainstream advice and yet, it’s radically simple and radically effective!
If you haven’t read it, do so. As soon as you possibly can!
Links from the discussion:
- Personal finance blogs that were among the first Jacob read before starting Early Retirement Extreme: Lazy Man & Money, Get Rich Slowly, The Simple Dollar.
- Skill acquisition can replace the need to spend money.
- Thomas Stanley’s latest book, “Stop Acting Rich“
- Liebig’s Law of the Minimum
- “The Rational Optimist” by Matt Ridley
- “Mortgage Free” by Rob Roy
- The Passive Haus and Leed building standards
- Allegory of the Cave
- “Why You Need F-You Money” Jim Collins
- “I Quit My Job to Live in a Tent and Write Code” and, an update on Thomas Backlund’s entrepreneurial journey
- Charlie Munger’s Latticework of Mental Models
- “The Warrior Diet” by Ori Hofmekler
- The last people in the world to not have a cell phone: The Bumfuzzles
- Ralph Borsodi
- Ernest Callenbach
- Helen and Scott Nearing
- Jacob’s interview on “The Survival Podcast” “Everything you do should make your life better even if nothing goes wrong.” -Jack Spirko
- Jacob’s interview on Paul Wheaton’s (from permies.com) podcast
Podcast was outstanding. Interviewer and interviewee were most knowledgeable and interesting. Best podcast/interview I’ve ever listened to.
Now I’m looking forward to listening to your other content.
Thanks Mike! I really appreciate those comments. They inspire me to keep going every day!
Any chance you’d be willing to take two minutes and leave that review in iTunes as well? That would really be tremendously helpful in getting the word out.
Thanks!
Great podcast. I disagree with the comment about solar panels taking decades to break even, however. I had a (net-metered) system installed this year, with a projected break even point of 5 years. Partly this may be due to my state having better tax incentives, but we also have very little sun for half the year. Everyone should look into this on their own, as results vary by location, angle of your roof, etc. It can be a worthy investment for some. I think prices have come down more than Jacob realizes.
Jacob,
This was an awesome interview. I had sporadically read Jacob’s work at ERE but hearing this really changed my perspective. I wrote an entire blog post about it which I am linking if you don’t mind:
http://eatthefinancialelephant.com/want-to-know-how-to-retire-early-start-asking-the-right-questions/
I really like what you’re doing with the show and your presentation is steadily improving. Keep it up!
Chris
Chris,
That’s an awesome article! You are exactly right in what you gained from Jacob’s interview.
People are often looking for “the number.” Frankly, it doesn’t exist. Once you learn the skills, you hardly need to worry about the magic amount of money you need because you’ve developed entirely new approaches.
Great interview, but i wanted to hear Jacob’s idea more than yours. I think the art of interview is to give the audience more of the guest perspective. Overall still very good discussion.
Hi Joshua,
I found this podcast from the ERE forum. Love what you are doing. One comment in regards to the warrior diet and the social aspect of eating together: you can still be at the table and socialize with your family without eating. I usually have a cup of coffee or tea while my family is eating breakfast or a snack together. I hope that helps if you do decide to try intermittent fasting again. It did for me anyway. Thanks again for your amazing work!
Thanks so much, HBW! You’re hardcore! I might try it again–we’ll see.
Make sure you don’t show any skepticism to any of his theories, though, or you will be banned from his forum. I was banned for the messages I wrote in this thread: http://forum.earlyretirementextreme.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=118222
@Scrubby – Not sure why you are making up lies and engaging in libel. You have never been banned from the forums and indeed nobody has ever been banned for being skeptical. In total, only one person has ever been banned from the forum (for a 30 day period) and that was after several people complained about his lack of online etiquette.
It is possible that it was not intentional, but it was clearly an IP ban and it only happened after I tried to log in. After that I could no longer access the page in any browser unless I used a different IP. The ban was still in effect the next day. I see that it has been lifted now, though.
IPs sometimes get banned on the hosting level. I have no control over this. It happens if a particular IP or range of them has been used to spam anyone on my host. You’re not the first one this has happened to. I suggest next time you can’t log in somewhere that you check with me or whoever else first to see if there was some other reason you couldn’t log in before you go around spreading asinine accusations.
Thanks for this interview. I am nearly done the ERE book. It’s exciting to hear you comparing this philosophy to permaculture, because I have been making the same connection as I read. “Stacking functions”. It’s an unusual book by an unusual thinker.
The math goes way over my head, I’m an artsy type, you see. I’m left feeling less sure of how to approach investing than before I listened to this. Without being proficient with numbers, i just don’t see how I can really learn.
Amazingly, I used to live the way he talks about, just with a very low wage. Lifestyle inflation has crept in big time. It’s daunting to figure out how to unwind this. I was so much happier before.
I’m a woman who would be horrified to be given an engagement ring. And I’m a total cell phone hold out. I hate the bloody things! They are changing human behavior in a way I find very creepy. But the other hold-outs around me are dropping like flies. Skype sucks, it never seems to work well. Can’t we just use a land line for long interviews? This new technology everyone is so obsessed with doesn’t have the reliability that we once enjoyed. Built in redundancy creates a more stable system.
Anyway, this author does makes one think.
Great interview! I’ve been going back through the feed to re-listen to some of the shows that have faded in my memory. Jacob has done great writing that I aspire to adopt the ideas of.
I do want to correct the record on Chicago. Sorry to be nitpicky Joshua, but this is a very common mistake that makes Chicago sound like an unlivable place. Joshua states in passing in the final hour of the show that Chicago has the worst per capita murder rate. This is not true, Chicago has the 19th highest murder rate per capita (of US cities). It is true that the total of murders is the highest in the country because NYC and LA have made admirable strides that outpace the improvements Chicago has made. Chicago has a very large population and the murder and crimes are largely concentrated in certain neighborhoods. It’s terrible that any of these occur and it’s something we are constantly working on. Unfortunately there are powerful forces that push us in the wrong direction too.
Also as a general guideline remember that comparing cities is difficult. The land area and types of density that are annexed vary drastically. Chicago is much more comparable to San Francisco city + San Jose city + San Mateo County than the City of San Francisco alone.
https://www.timeout.com/chicago/blog/how-does-chicago-size-up-to-other-cities
NYC is so large that it may be more relevant to compare individual boroughs to other cities.
http://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/population-nyc-borough/