Retiring Before You're 40 Is Not What It Seems, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: Why retiring early isn't the escape you think it is, the complicated process of telling someone you love them over text and why home cooked meals can be a red herring.
Retiring Early Is Not What You Think It Is
It's what we all dream of, right? A life free from mandatory wage labor. However flawed or unreachable it is these days, within our Protestant work ethic-inspired American Dream there exists a central promise: Work hard and diligently for long enough, and you will earn your rest. Even the most No-Days-Off-Rise-And-Grind-But-First-Coffee people out there must think about a time after they have established their gig-economy fiefdom.
To hear someone not only able to retire, but to retire at the relatively young age of 38, well, that flies in the face of all that. This week, early retiree Tanja Hester spoke to the Cut's Charlotte Cowles about her experience of retiring almost 30 years ahead of schedule. Frustratingly, almost agonizingly, Hester focuses less on how she did it — the only signs pointing to graduating college debt-free and some home equity — and moreso on what it's like to not have to wake up and go to a job to continue to exist in this world.
You can, and should, read her experience, since she'll likely get you to think about what you personally might do if you didn't need to trade your time and effort to someone else to feed, house, clothe and entertain yourself. But I think if you're like anyone else trying to kill time reading this blog at your desk, you'll likely be screaming at your computer provided to you by your employer, "HOW DID YOU DO IT. PLEASE TELL ME HOW."
As it turns out, Hester is not the only person who has managed this feat. Unsurprisingly, the "trend" of retiring early is so much a thing that a group of men have formed a Reddit community around it, and like most groups of men online it is incredibly short-sighted and overwhelmingly toxic.
The trick, these Financial Independence and Early Retirement — abbreviated as FIRE, of course — gurus have come up with is that if you drastically cut down any and all non-essential spending you can save up enough over a decade in order to "retire" early. You should read Madeleine Holden's story because it has many great quotes — and reading original sources of things rules and keeps our industry afloat — but I say "retire" because one of the guys interviewed in this story still relies on income from his wife, who is still working.
I will also say that I am not an economist, but if everyone was suddenly able to find a way to retire early, I don't think we would be able to replenish the labor force fast enough to either feed the hungry monster of the economy, or regress on some very important child labor laws.
[The Cut]
It Takes A Lot To Say 'I Love You' Over Text
When was the last time you texted someone "I love you'"? It probably took a lot to say that, didn't it? Maybe not in the actual physical labor to tap it out on your phone, or even the emotional labor in that moment to tell someone you care about them. But it still probably took quite some time to build up the trust, understanding and vulnerability it really requires to tell someone that you love them, in whatever way it means to you and that person.
I suppose you'll be happy to know that your phone is also doing a lot of work in order to text someone "I love you." In a blog post aimed at educating full-stack developers, Scott B. Weingart painstakingly, beautifully walks you through almost every single thing that happens when you text "I love you." From the capacitive screen discerning the intentions of your fingertips, to a blast of electromagnetic radiation that is subsequently picked up, transmitted and translated by the recipients phone — it is one of those delightfully complex things that suddenly makes you appreciate just how far we have come.
Home Cooking Is Not The Answer, But It's Also Not The Problem
At this moment in time it has never been easier or more difficult to feed yourself. As you read this, there are robots roving about the Bay Area delivering snacks while the invisible hand of the economy has seen fit to make televisions and video game consoles cheaper instead of education, health care and food. Given that we all need to eat, it's no surprise that there are just a whole mess of issues that arise when the capitalism's need to grow forever intersects with the real and unavoidable need to feed a planet of almost 8 billion.
One small slice of that is the value we place in eating together as a family. This week, Vox's Rachel Sugar spoke to three sociologists — Sarah Bowen, Joslyn Brenton, and Sinikka Elliott — authors of "Pressure Cooker: Why Home Cooking Won't Solve Our Problems and What We Can Do About It." As the title suggests, their aim is to examine the notion that a healthy, happy home is one where everyone sits down at the dinner table every night to share a meal and talk about their day.
And while the title of their book would lead you to believe otherwise, the truth is, as it always is, a little more nuanced than "cooking is actually bad" as some on the internet have suggested.
What Bowen, Brenton and Elliott find is that the issue is not that wrangling everyone for a family meal isn't effective, is that it's an unrealistic expectation given the current state of things. When we look back to "better times," we're not only looking back into a time where gendered roles around the house created an unfair division of labor, but also one that conveniently excludes white middle class families hiring servants to help with chores around the house. To expect two working parents to find the time and energy to plan and prepare nightly home-cooked dinners is unfair.
The responsibility, Bowen, Brenton and Elliott argue, should fall not to the individual, but to the state. Things like affordable child care, health care and other social safety nets free parents up to prioritize other important needs of the house, like planning, shopping and cooking family meals.
That isn't to say that if the state shares some of the burden of raising a child, thus freeing parents to feed them in a way that is both nutritionally and psychologically healthy is a panacea. There's still many issues within who is implicitly tasked with that cooking and when. Both parents could be cooking for their children for every meal, but if one is just doing the weekday cooking and packing lunches while the other is preparing elaborate feasts on the weekend… well, one is clearly more visible and impactful than the other.
[Vox]
