Will the FIRE movement cause a shortage of pain doctors?

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SSdoc33 said:
you've peaked my interest. i was under the assumption that flood damage is not covered unless you are in a gvt-designated flood prone area. i thought you could not buy flood insurance otherwise -- the carriers dont offer it. is this not true?
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PS, I piqued your interest but don't worry it's tongue in cheek, touche, lol. Please refer to my signature, lol!
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Pain Applicant1 said:
PS, I piqued your interest but don't worry it's tongue in cheek, touche, lol. Please refer to my signature, lol!
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you are correct. it is piqued. douchebaggy to correct someone's grammar, but correct nonetheless
 
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Pain Applicant1 said:
calme te, take a joke, do you not remember the whole tongue and cheek reference
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"calmAte"

and

no, i dont remember the tongue and cheek, but did you say that and mean "tongue-in-cheek"?


also, of course if your pipe bursts or toilet overflows and you get flooded that is covered. my question was if there is a big rainstorm or a river overflows. that is considered an "act of god" and not covered. correct?

also, im not in love with the fact that i need to invoke the Almighty in regards to insurance regulations....
 
SSdoc33 said:
"calmAte"

and

no, i dont remember the tongue and cheek, but did you say that and mean "tongue-in-cheek"?


also, of course if your pipe bursts or toilet overflows and you get flooded that is covered. my question was if there is a big rainstorm or a river overflows. that is considered an "act of god" and not covered. correct?

also, im not in love with the fact that i need to invoke the Almighty in regards to insurance regulations....
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refer again to my signature --- it wasn't too long ago. you really don't remember????


----

flooding originating from the outside of the dwelling will not be covered with most hazard policies as you would typically need a separate flood insurance policy. Anyone can purchase a flood insurance policy but to purchase from the gov program I believe you need to be located in a specific flood zone. Not the same for the non gov commercial plans.

Flood ins was expensive when I last checked, that's why I removed that property from that flood zone and was able to secure a note without having to buy flood ins. I'll take my risk with that one. For those with less risk tolerance, you can purchase the flood ins and do the same exact thing with the hazard policy that I mentioned above if flooding occurs.

force majure is one of my favorite legal terms.
 
Pain Applicant1 said:
refer again to my signature --- it wasn't too long ago. you really don't remember????


----

flooding originating from the outside of the dwelling will not be covered with most hazard policies as you would typically need a separate flood insurance policy. Anyone can purchase a flood insurance policy but to purchase from the gov program I believe you need to be located in a specific flood zone. Not the same for the non gov commercial plans.

Flood ins was expensive when I last checked, that's why I removed that property from that flood zone and was able to secure a note without having to buy flood ins. I'll take my risk with that one. For those with less risk tolerance, you can purchase the flood ins and do the same exact thing with the hazard policy that I mentioned above if flooding occurs.

force majure is one of my favorite legal terms.
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great. ill use force majure instead. thanks

i guess you do learn some things from studentdoctor


and yeah, i now remember the tongue in cheek / tongue and cheek conversation. i didnt realize you were sitting around for 7 months waiting for me to make a spelling/grammatical error, tho.....
 
SSdoc33 said:
great. ill use force majure instead. thanks

i guess you do learn some things from studentdoctor


and yeah, i now remember the tongue in cheek / tongue and cheek conversation. i didnt realize you were sitting around for 7 months waiting for me to make a spelling/grammatical error, tho.....
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yes, exactly. Waiting - licking my chops for this wonderful moment. Life is now fulfilled and I can die in peace.
 
DOctorJay said:
it's more of a guideline so you can figure out your number and work backwards from.

take your current annual spend, multiply it by 25. that's your FI number to work towards.
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The only caveat I can think of is when you quit your job, your healthcare insurance might go up dramatically. I think that's the #1 concern with FIRE in the US.
 
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hyperalgesia said:
The only caveat I can think of is when you quit your job, your healthcare insurance might go up dramatically. I think that's the #1 concern with FIRE in the US.
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Yes that is one of my main concerns with the potential of retiring early.

Of course a lot of other costs will be eliminated (disability insurance, term life, kids will be out of the house, commuting costs, etc).
 
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DOctorJay said:
Yes that is one of my main concerns with the potential of retiring early.

Of course a lot of other costs will be eliminated (disability insurance, term life, kids will be out of the house, commuting costs, etc).
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Good point that there are costs that are eliminated when retiring. But I plan to spend a lot more money traveling than I currently do, so am specifically budgeting for that.
 
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Pain Applicant1 said:
I think you might be mixing up a few things. Flooding from the outside is not covered by typical hazard insurance. Doesn't matter if it's a force majure or a broken pipe. You will have to get flood insurance to cover this which is a separate policy.

There are FEMA flood zones that you're referring to. If you're in a certain flood zone the lender offering you your note will require flood insurance as they need to protect themselves and the gov, I believe, will then offer you their insurance, nfip, if you want it. You can check out the FEMA flood maps if interested. You can petition to take your property out of the flood zone by ordering an elevation survey and seeing if you qualify. If so, you just reduced your overhead significantly by not having to buy flood insurance. I've been successful at doing this.

Anyway, flooding from the inside is typically covered. I've had to deal with this several times due to various plumbing issues. The laborers who mitigate the flood damage and then the contractors who come to repair afterward are notoriously expensive. These guys milk the insurance companies. The insurance companies are aware of this but they still base their payment to you on these prices regardless. The insurance company will cut a check to the contractors directly unless you tell them not to and to pay you directly. If they pay you, it's up to you what you decide to do with that money. Make sure they pay you directly.

Once the insurance adjuster makes the offer of what they're going to pay you go and hire yourself a public adjuster. They do everything the insurance adjuster does but they represent you and can get you much more money. On a $60,000 job, for instance, they can probably negotiate for you at least $10,000 more.

Once you receive the payment, you can then do the work yourself or just sub it out individually. From my experience, a $70,000 job will usually cost me about $20,000. That's how crazy the markup is. A few hundred dollar sheetrock repair will usually net you about $2000. Even if you sub it out, it should still save you significant amounts of money.

Floods are pretty easy to address now. It's mostly pumping the water out, running dehumidifiers and fans until it dries out, and keeping doors and windows open. Cut the sheetrock a couple of feet from the floor if it's ruined.

I'm now at the point where I love seeing major damage because it's so lucrative for me.
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What’s a public adjuster and how do you go about finding a reputable one?

I went through this with a rental property a couple of years back where the second floor shower was leaking into the first floor. Had mold remediation come in and do the whole nine yards. Realized it was overkill afterwards. We had just gotten into investment properties then so it was new to us.
 
Baron Samedi said:
I hoard money like a dragon. I hate spending, to my wife's dismay -- so not sure I'll ever actually retire and spend it.

Numbers going up is biggest dopamine rush.
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Driving a car you built in your garage on a race track.



Canyon Bombing on an S1000RR
 
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A couple who retired early with $4.3 million says the FIRE lifestyle is wearing thin: ‘We don’t want to just keep throwing money on the pile and keep being cheap’

BYCHLOE BERGER
June 25, 2023 at 6:00 AM MST

fortune.com

A couple who retired early with $4.3 million says FIRE lifestyle is wearing thin

"We don’t want to just keep throwing money on the pile and keep being cheap."
fortune.com fortune.com


Pinching pennies can get tiring after a while. Just ask Mindy and Carl, an early 50s-something couple who joined the FIRE (Financial Independence/Retire Early) movement six years ago with $4.3 million saved. They recently sat down with personal finance guru Ramit Sethi for his podcast, “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” where they explained that living frugally may be more stress than it’s worth.


”We don’t want to just keep throwing money on the pile and keep being cheap,” Mindy said. “I do look at everything based on how much it costs, and I don’t need to. I shouldn’t.”

She and Carl recalled a time when they were out to breakfast and their daughter bought the most expensive item on the menu (for $20), resulting in a $99 bill with tip—not a big dent in their millions, but something that amounted to a lot of financial anxiety for them nonetheless.


Their attitude towards money is a byproduct of what Carl says is a scarcity mentality he developed growing up as well as the years they spent saving to become financially independent, a lifestyle that typically involves intense budgeting to eliminate debt and prioritize savings (consider the six-figure-earning Manhattan lawyer who lived off rice and beans so he could retire early). Mindy and Carl focused on flipping real estate to get to where they are today, which helped them sock away $10,000 in savings, accumulate $925,000 in assets, and earn $4.2 million in investments (plus $910,000 in real estate debt). But now that they’ve achieved financial independence, they feel paralyzed with the fear of spending the money they worked so hard to save.


“We’ve identified that we probably live sub optimally,” Carl explained to Sethi. “If something truly makes you happy, you should spend money on it, and that’s what you [Sethi] do. And there’s stuff we’ve postponed or we think about money too much, and at this point, we probably shouldn’t.”


Of course, this is the whole point of Sethi’s podcast and his “I will teach you to be rich” brand, seen in his new Netflix show How to Get Rich. Frugality is often touted as the key to building wealth, but much of his platform is about detaching the feelings of guilt from spending, antithetical to a lot of the FIRE lifestyle. His take is that people can focus on saving and building wealth by cutting out the expenses that don’t spawn joy while learning how to spend on those that do, thus creating a rich life.


He prodded the FIRE couple to see his less prudent way of finances, bluntly saying that life is short and urging them to spend more. His critique of the FIRE movement, he said, is that its focus on not spending isn’t an effective system—once you reach your goals, you’re often stuck in a habit of always being frugal. It all leads to this guilt around spending and a fear of “losing control,” he said.


That seems to be the case for Carl and Mindy, who said she has “a cautiousness when it comes to money, a hesitancy to do anything but preserve. I feel security in the investments, but I don’t want to touch them. They’re for the future.”


FIRE isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be


FIRE was popularized in the 1990s with the best-selling book “Your Money or Your Life,” taking off even further in the 2010s following the Great Recession. But as major figures in the movement spend more time in their retirement and the economy becomes more challenging for even late-retirees to brave without returning to the workforce, holes in the FIRE lifestyle have begun poking out.


Early retiree Charmagne Chi told Fortune’s Alicia Adamczyk that the stereotypical advice to avoid avocado toast is “such bull****” and that she was able to largely achieve financial independence due to lack of student debt and self-admitted privilege. Sam Dogen, who retired 11 years ago with $3 million, recently admitted that he’s looking to return to work so he can afford to fund his child’s college education. And in Carl’s case, he thought reaching his financial milestone would make him happier, but realized he didn’t feel all that different once he accomplished his goal.


“Why do I feel pretty much the exact same?” he told Sethi he wondered after retiring early. “I started doing some research, and I learned that happiness is mostly something that comes from you. It comes from the inside, not an external factor.” While he’s not looking to “downplay the money,” he explained that once he hit his goals, he realized that money wouldn’t flip this switch towards instant gratification.


He admitted that he’s tiring of the financial anxiety and that they “let go” for the first time on a recent trip to New York City. They actually enjoyed spending money on show tickets and going out to dinner, he said.


“You can only do so much in the day, and when you spend precious minutes of your life, especially if you get older, when you’re 50, you could be using that time to do other things,” he admits. “So maybe any purchase under a certain amount, you shouldn’t even think about or consider. You shouldn’t waste any mind space considering it.”
 
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People who are ambitious and money-obsessed their entire lives, don't FIRE well.

They're like the proverbial dog that catches the car.
 
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One of the reasons I decided to go independent: retirement.

I have set up 401k’s and cash balance plans for both myself and my lone employee. There will be at least $15M (probably more) combined in these plans by the time I reach 59.5. Then you have the backdoor Roth and HSA. There will be so much money there is no need to keep working past 59.5, probably 55 is my target age.
 
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BobBarker said:
One of the reasons I decided to go independent: retirement.

I have set up 401k’s and cash balance plans for both myself and my lone employee. There will be at least $15M (probably more) combined in these plans by the time I reach 59.5. Then you have the backdoor Roth and HSA. There will be so much money there is no need to keep working past 59.5, probably 55 is my target age.
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Wow, what’s your savings rate annually? Also, what are you expecting to average out for returns? I’m assuming as long as interest rates along with inflation stay where they are I assume 7% + return is reasonable for the foreseeable future but I’ll have to consult my tarot card reader and magic 8-ball before I make any adjustments to my portfolio just to be sure.
 
You can put huge amounts pretax in the cash balance plan. Currently the max is around $3.2M. But it goes up every year. So savings pre tax is much different than post tax.
 
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BobBarker said:
You can put huge amounts pretax in the cash balance plan. Currently the max is around $3.2M. But it goes up every year. So savings pre tax is much different than post tax.
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Never heard of a pre-tax cash balance plan. Assume you must be a business owner for this?
 
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Yes, sometimes called a defined benefit plan. You must be a part of a business that offers one. You don’t have to be an owner necessarily. Their design is based on a pension. It works best in our field for the owner of a small practice.
 
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oneforfighting said:
What’s a public adjuster and how do you go about finding a reputable one?

I went through this with a rental property a couple of years back where the second floor shower was leaking into the first floor. Had mold remediation come in and do the whole nine yards. Realized it was overkill afterwards. We had just gotten into investment properties then so it was new to us.
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I would start with Google. I found one because a tree fell through one of my properties a few years ago and the insurance company was dragging its feet.

The property was condemned by the county because it wasn't safe due to the damage and they cut the power off. I didn't want to get started fixing it up until the insurance company's adjuster came to look at it. There was meat in the freezer so it began to rot and stink to holy hell because it was mid-summer. Taking care of that odor along with the toilet was the day I officially became a man.

Anyway, I contacted an attorney because the stink was spreading and I had to get things rolling. He told me that I should first contact a public adjuster. I think he gave me a phone number but I eventually realized edit: SOMEONE I KNEW was training to be one so I just used this person. This person charged me 10 percent of whatever was collected above what the insurance company eventually offered.

-----

Overkill is how it works and is a great thing. Most of the time a leak, especially a non chronic one, will dry out once repaired without incident. However, in the insurance world, you have to open the ceiling/wall to check, replace drywall, check for any flooring damage - if there is you need to replace the entire floor, dry out the leak, check for moisture buildup, find where the leak came from - if from drain you need access so more opening up of walls or ceilings for a shower, repair/replace plumbing fixtures, etc...

Insurance company does not agree??? Really, the contractor just reviewed everything with the property owner and the owner is all worked up. They're scared of "toxic" Black mold buildup. Does the ins co really want b an infuriated customer?

All of this adds up quickly. The profit I mentioned above is after all of the renovations have been completed.
 
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