Unfortunately, the man’s happiness was short-lived.
He recently revealed that his savings had significantly diminished due to the yen’s depreciation since the start of the year.
The man also expressed concern that if the yen continued to weaken, achieving financial freedom might remain out of reach, rendering his 21 years of hard work seemingly pointless and tragic.
Oof. He got pranked.
sorry, the fed raising rates made the carry trade unprofitable. Back to work serf.
time
“easy, just save more money for retirement”Its only a decline in Dollar terms, not purchasing power tbf.
if he were in Pakistan or some global South country, a 40% depreciation would (likely) mean a 40% reduction (maybe more) in purchasing power but its not 1:1 with Japan (and China, Russia, most Western countries).
spoiler
What is CPI?
Edit: Consumer Price Index
Maybe he had investments that were affected by it.
I’d burn down the Japanese stock exchange at that point.
future
Lives in a company dorm and rent is still $250 a month.
I’m definitely not complaining about OP’s intentions, but this kinda thing has gotta be a subset of neoliberal propaganda.
I can only read this article in an extreme cynical manner
The vibe I get from these articles is “see, even losers like you can be successful and independent if you tried just a bit harder”. They also never mentions about how they paid for uni and have no family responsibilities whatsoever. If feel like Citations Needed needs to do a breakdown of these tropes.
and have no family responsibilities whatsoever
There’s corpo dorm mentioned, which combined with rest of content means no family and no social life.
Oh totally. I might be reading into this too hard, but people not having to take care of parents, siblings, kids, or comrades is the unspoken entitlement in these stories.
They kinda already did. It’s old, but Episode 77: Frugality Fables and the Poor-Shaming Grift of Financial Advice Journalism covers a lot of this
Good spot!
That may be the intention, but I think you’d have to be a neolib true believer for the article to read as anything but deeply dystopian
Good spot!
their definition of “success and independence” is also stupid, like imagine calling your economic system “the best possible outcome with no alternative” with all the best modern amenities etc. when you define “success” as being free from it… by not using these modern amenities to save money while wageslaving
dumb system run by evil morons
That’s more of a horror story until last paragraph.
I thought this was a dunk tank post at first.
- : “Hey workers, if you really wanted to survive just eat rice in cold water for the rest of your life.”
The article says he saved up 1.18 million Singapore dollars, which is about 892,000 USD. Are they seriously saying that’s ”never have to work again” money?
Is it not close?? The man is 45, it’s only 15 years until the man is eligible for state pension and average life expectancy gives him 36 more years.
40,000 USD/year, tax-free for 15 years, with no travelling-to-work or uniform or work lunch costs, free to live wherever he likes and is cheap. And then he still has 300,000 USD plus state pension (I have no idea how good Japan’s pension is).
Add on minor income / cost offsets from whatever retirement hobbies like gardening, it doesn’t seem crazy to me.
From the info I found, you won’t be eligible for pension until you reach 65, so that’s 20 years. I guess it’s not as bad as it initially seemed, but then again no more company dorm to live in after quitting.
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If you don’t have a million dollars you can’t even have a house in the US so I have no idea how much money this actually is
Cw: finance brainworms
The principle of FIRE mentioned in the article is FI financial independence (first/and/or) Retire Early. The $1.18m sgd figure may not be enough to retire on, but enough that if he were made redundant he would have savings to live, or if he wanted to career pivot/travel/buy a house he would be less dependent on his salary. Basically it’s the buffer to help achieve independence from his primary source of income (salary). I’d take it to mean he’s achieved the FI of FIRE with an eye to the RE after his (vulnerable) savings are converted into real estate or investment.
Yeah the entire FIRE community is all about creating “”“passive income”“”. The whole thing is PMC proles with petty-bourgeoise aspirations.
I browsed a fire subreddit and it was the most miserly, boring, spreadsheet obsessed losers arguing over which single etf they should drop their $50,000 inheritence into. A smaller portion was those who scrimped and saved to eventually become slumlords and a smaller portion still were people who stole ideas from r/povertyfinance and repackaged them as the true path to wealth as though earning six figure salaries isn’t a surer path to bourgeousification than not buying a latte twice a week. Truly a bizzare community.
It’s incredibly sad but it’s a very insightful step into that class aspirational mindset. All of these people are completely impossible for communists to reach, they really believe in this system and they’re playing it like you would play a videogame.
im trying to save up to retire early and here i am.
in my case its not out of hope for the system but utter hate at having to spend 6 days a week and all my youth in a shitty artificially lit office.
i have enough money where i can tell an employer to fuck off if they try to pull shit, and have time to find another job.
Yeah but unfortunately many of these people are not just trying to become un-exploited, but trying to become exploiters. It’s full of boasting about it in fact too. Vile.
when education isnt liberating, the oppressed’s dream is to become the oppressor.
It also might be enough if you keep eating cold rice every day. Not having to work just doesn’t seem like it’d be worth it if your only hobby was existing.
at 4% withdrawal, thats $35680 usd a year to live off of, which is not hard at all if you have a house paid off.
Now Little Johnnie can build his own apartment in New York City out of Galvanized Steel Frames, Eco Friendly Wood Veneers and Screws he Borrowed from His Auntie.
Political economy, this science of wealth, is therefore simultaneously the science of renunciation, of want, of saving and it actually reaches the point where it spares man the need of either fresh air or physical exercise. This science of marvellous industry is simultaneously the science of asceticism, and its true ideal is the ascetic but extortionate miser and the ascetic but productive slave. Its moral ideal is the worker who takes part of his wages to the savings-bank, and it has even found ready-made a servile art which embodies this pet idea: it has been presented, bathed in sentimentality, on the stage. Thus political economy – despite its worldly and voluptuous appearance – is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-renunciation, the renunciation of life and of all human needs, is its principal thesis. The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power – all this it can appropriate for you – it can buy all this: it is true endowment. Yet being all this, it wants to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant, and when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice.
from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm
Okay, this might be the thing that actually gets me to read theory. Hasan ain’t got SHIT on that quote lmao
What I don’t understand about people like this is the wasting of all your younger years for some hypothetical future of leisure when you could die in your sleep today. Like, what’s the point?
It feels like a complicated exercise in some sort of meaning seeking in a hollow world, like some bastardization of seeking enlightenment or freedom from purely selfish and individualistic goals that don’t even benefit you.
And no better example of how the system we live in is not built for the proles, all this saving and then suddenly the value can just be gone. And still they keep going.
Is this economic frugality as a religion or something, not sure. But it sure is weird.
What I don’t understand about people like this is the wasting of all your younger years for some hypothetical future of leisure when you could die in your sleep today.
yeah literally this, its so fucking insane, leave it to the bloody singaporean media to publish such depressing neoliberal bullshit
What I don’t understand about people like this is the wasting of all your younger years for some hypothetical future of leisure when you could die in your sleep today. Like, what’s the point?
It’s just a matter of having accepted and internalised what the point is of you being born and alive is as told by the ruling class. You are supposed to work your bones off, generating surplus value for your masters, and be miserable in the off time, unable to imagine a better world.
And even if you don’t die, why would you trade young healthy years for when you’re older, have less energy, and possibly less mobile?
