#FD-ROT

Do you think that FD-ROT will become a thing?

Me neither.

After reading several dozen blog entries and comments on Reddit on #FIRE, I feel as if I am left to wander around in a daze.

Are there really that many people who are able to retire early with financial independence?  If so, what constitutes “early”?  I thought that Millennials were struggling with finances, bouncing around from gig to gig, still living with their parents and generally faring worse financially than the generations preceding them.

Not so, according to the many recent articles about one in six Millennials already having socked away a hundred grand, and many of them saving at a greater clip than my own generation, called X.

How is it, then, that you can go to the #FIRE section of Reddit or the thousands of Twitter accounts like this one or this one and read about someone in their twenties or thirties already contemplating that elusive thing that people call “retirement”?

After reading several of these and trying to stave off the depression that comes with being a forty-seven-year-old middle class guy with a Millennial boss fifteen years younger, and having approximately eight more years of IMRF employment and another five years of work after 2025, I typically scrounge around the bottom of the Internet barrel reading stories titled “How to Make Money Immediately” or some such click bait. 

Me, I am in the FD-ROT boat.  I am Financially Dependent and want to Retire On Time.  On time to me means having attained the age of double nickels, at which time I would have contributed to IMRF for thirty-two –and-a-half long, difficult years.  If I cannot find a way to significantly enhance my income, such as via blogging, eBooks and/or an e-commerce site, I will most likely be seeking out gainful employment at the ripe old age of fifty-four.  Not exactly retiring “early.”

Then again, I recognize that many folks are forced to work jobs, crappy or otherwise, in their sixties and, in some cases, into their seventies.  Me, I do not want to be taking orders from someone who is in grammar school now twenty years from now. 

What I would like would be collecting my pension at the age of fifty-five and then getting another job that pays in six figures or, far better than that, generating a comparable income through a combination of speaking, writing, teaching and consulting.  I would not mind representing a developer going for a difficult approval in the town that currently employs me or any other suburban town in the Chicago area.  I don’t really wish to mess around with Chicago.

FD-ROT is actually somewhat misleading.  I do not like to claim being financially dependent, although I am.  

But CFDBWTBLS-ROT is far too long and difficult to remember or type.

Care to guess what that stands for?  Keep reading.

I am not really sure what it would take for me to feel financially independent.  Of course, being a middle aged guy with a wife who works extremely part-time, a son in college and a daughter who will be going in three years and a mountain of bills that support a suburban lifestyle in the Chicago area, that number would be fairly large.  I do not think that I would be comfortable retiring with a million bucks at this time.

As a matter of fact, I know that I would not feel financially independent with only a million bucks to my name.  A million bucks plus about fifteen grand per month in steady income would make me feel fairly independent.  However, as an economic development professional for nearly eighteen years, I have seen many businesses that generated fifteen grand per month or more in profits fizzle out to zero after owners became complacent or their goods or services were replaced by a lower-cost option or outsourced or computerized or, in some cases, all three.

No, it would take quite a bit more for me to feel financially independent.

I do know a guy who literally retired about three years ago at the age of forty-three.  I also happen to know that the amount that he had banked is in the two million dollar range.  I know this because my best friend remains friends with the guy and my wife is “friends” with him on Facebook.  He was one of my three roommates for a year at the UW many moons ago.  He made his fortune in trading options and after surviving an SEC investigation in which his trading partners were busted, he retired and has basically traveled the world with his wife since.  They do not have children.

As of now, I am simply trying to crank out a few extra dollars per month via Amazon affiliate ads and Google AdSense on this blog.  It has not generated much.

I have two eBooks on Amazon, one of which sells a few copies here and there and one of which does not.  But I do have a plan to add several more this year, even if they do not meet the quality standards that I would consider necessary to publish something.

After reading a few articles lately about how Steve “SJ” Scott cranks out super-short, extremely simplistic books like Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less and makes up to forty grand per month with them, it made a light bulb, albeit a small one, go off over my head.

Why be so obsessed with spending years writing something that my mother would be proud of and that would be worthy of review by literary magazines when I could probably crank out a book comprised of fifty lists by this time two months from now?

I won’t even put my name on it, instead making up a name, male or female, that is one of the most popular Millennial names.  Michael or Christopher or Jessica or Ashley and a WASPY last name like some variant of Huffington or Billingsley or maybe even my favorite mutual fund, Wellington.

How about “77 Things to Make You Healthy, Wealthy and Wise” by Jessica Wellington?  Or "One Easy Thing You Can Do Each Week to Improve Your Life By Next Year" by Michael Chesterfield?  I’m sure that some people would buy it, provided that I include a nice stock photo of a smiling Millennial on the cover.

I may be Currently Financially Dependent But Want To Be Less So and I want to Retire On Time.