Innovation creates wealth.

If I create a killer social media app, and then found a company around it, wealth is created. This is made possible in part by the existence of the securities market, which allows other people to contribute real money to my company, at a rate based on the perceived future value of that company. As the perceived value increases, then the expected future value of their investment increases. Even though no (or very little) actual utility value exists, more wealth has been created than the amount of actual money changing hands. This continues for so long as I continue to innovate at a rate which keeps pace with or exceeds the rate of innovation in the same market by others. If I stop innovating, the wealth disappears.

Innovation can also create resources.

Having instantaneous access to the sum total of all human knowledge is certainly a resource. It makes me much more efficient at my job, by breaking down many barriers to accessing technical standards, data sheets, and user manuals. It also allows me to move information (such as TV programming, which has value in a different way) from one place to another with zero incremental cost and nearly zero delay. This is much more efficient (and much faster, and much cheaper) than how we did it 40 years ago, which was to project information onto light-sensitive plastic, then expend chemicals to cause the plastic to show a copy of the information, and then put the information-containing plastic into a container and pay a company to transport it by airplane to another location. Especially when that was being done hundreds of times per day for a big network station like mine.

For their part, the phone company also created value by innovating a new thing to do with glass. I pay them about $20,000 a month, and in exchange, they let me shine a light into some long, thin pieces of glass, and that light comes out the other end dozens or hundreds of miles away. They just make sure that the pieces of glass which stick out inside my building are connected to other pieces of glass, which I specify, that stick out inside other people's buildings. Is that a resource? Well, people are certainly willing to pay money for it.

Or, consider a more tangible example. Let's say that we live in a world in which petroleum is drawn out of the ground and refined to make lubricating oils and kerosene for lighting, because electric light bulbs haven't been invented yet. There's a bunch of lightweight, hugely flammable stuff left over from this process which is way too volatile to put into a lamp, so it's just burned off as a waste product. Now, I dream of then then design an engine which is capable of using that waste product, instead of coal or wood, as its fuel, in order to propel a vehicle. Suddenly, that waste product is now a valuable commodity. I transformed garbage into a resource (let's call it gasoline, just to pick a name at random) simply by thinking up a new engine design.

If you're not sure about this, go watch Art Laffer discuss his "Laffer Curve." Wear a helmet.

Interestingly, I am at a stage in my life in which this question is very relevant.


I'm 46 years of age. Not old, not young.

A combination of factors, many of which were outside of my control, have resulted in my having a pretty good career so far. In addition to having been born into an industrialized nation to non-drug-addict parents and with a predisposition towards certain neurological characteristics which enable me to perform a specific range of seemingly unrelated tasks a little bit better than the average human, I've also worked quite hard and foregone many simple pleasures in order to rise to the upper echelons of a very weird and niche industry (in which our only product of monetary value is to create a conduit for the transmission of advertising.) And, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm a millionaire. Just barely, as of a few months ago. (I update an assets / liabilities spreadsheet at the end of each month. Have been doing it since late 1999. The next market downturn will pull me back out of that status.) I don't usually talk about such things, but it's relevant in this specific conversation.

Ok, so that's our baseline.

Now, I have determined through experience in recent years that I very much enjoy being a nomad in the deserts of the south-western US. This isn't a hypothetical, It's something that I now have several months' accumulated experience at (spread out over four years), and I'm fairly certain that it's how I'd prefer to spend the rest of my life. I've done a bunch of math, and determined that if I continue to work at a job comparable to my present role, I will be able to retire in nine years, purchase and massively upgrade a backwoods-capable RV, and then vanish into the wild, with enough money in the bank to sustain a very comfortable lifestyle for about 20 years with no further income.

"Comfortable," of course, being a relative term for a desert nomad. I'm counting on still buying lavish meats, cheeses and liquor on my twice-monthly excursions into the nearest town to wherever I happen to be at any given time. Those are the one luxury which I plentifully allow myself today, and I desire them to continue.

That puts me at age 75 when the money runs out, which is almost exactly the average life expectancy for a male in the US. As a heavy drinker, I'm probably at the lower end the scale. So, assuming I haven't died from falling off a cliff or being bitten by a rattlesnake by that time, my body will be pretty used up by the end of it, and no longer in mountain-climbing condition.

(I am not factoring Social Security into the equation.)


Did my spending the past 30 years hoarding wealth vastly in excess of what's necessary to meet my basic needs add no value to my life in its later stage?


I'm pretty sure I'll feel like it did, when I'm sipping a rum and coke on that very first cliffside on which I'm boondocked at age 55, in my own rig (rather than a rental as I do presently as my vacation schedule allows), while folks ten years my senior who made poorer decisions (divorce, affairs resulting in children, unwise speculative real estate investments, etc) are still punching the figurative clock every day.


On a long enough timescale, surplus wealth absolutely equates to a higher quality of life. And, as I'm writing this, I think to ask whether you are considering time as part of your equation?

Time is more important than money, it is not tangible. My alma mater which is an agricultural and mechanical engineering university taught me that it is better to be on schedule and over budget than the inverse.

There is more to life than money. I got married at 40 and had my son at 42. I’m now 55 and have been working since 15. I don’t considered myself fortunate for what I have, but what I have accomplished. What I mean is that I do have a lot, but I’m thankful being able to have earned it. Not everyone can accomplish the same.

I have know many that speak of retiring early, not many do it.

I wish I could give more than one :likecat: for all of this.

Because it's a lot of heavy matter. I suspect that it's earned. There is deep truth in what you write.

I've lived in the desert in an RV and it is where I'm happiest. I think the sweet spot for being an RV weirdo is 40 to 50. Wealthy enough to get a nice, respectable rig, but young enough to hike and chop wood all day, and go without regular doctor visits. It stops making sense past the age of 60. Beyond that, it's just too demanding physically.

I'm in between Joe and Leo. I'll be 50 soon. I have been seriously considering early or more than likely partial retirement. No kids and little debt. Torn between leaving sooner, and having to pick up something part time or sticking it out for a little longer and then be able to do full retirement.

I am close to loathing what I do. Lower level management. The buck stops here. Blamed for everything. Fairly large mid Atlantic company, with a global parent company. This woke DEI bs is getting out of hand.

For me, I get a pension but I'm too young to draw now. That will be in my 60s. 401k will start at 59 1/2. Soc sec at 62. So I'm working on bridging the gap between now and then. My wife is younger with a lot less time in position. I would go on her healthcare plan and that frees me up to find something I will enjoy.

The joy of our current inflation means that anything you've saved will be worth 1/10th that in ten years, unless you believe the stated inflation numbers instead of what you're actually paying for in stores.

As a 58 year old with a compressed L4/L5 disc, things start to go South with age and even "hopping" in the Miata starts to be a challenge...

I'll be 82 soon and can still throw my leg over to get into the Catfish. Getting out takes a little longer:eek4:

I'm 51 and a plumbing contractor. My herniated C5/C6 discs don't bother me most days. My retirement plan is to become a plumbing inspector when the body can't or won't do what I ask of it. Plenty of guys do that shit past 80. Pay is about 60% of what I make now to start, but lots of days off, insurance, etc., like any other gov't job. Compared to what I do now, it's retirement.

I ain't moving to the sticks nor the rocks. The large metropolis I live in has too many conveniences, amenities, services I don't wish to live without. I would live in paradise were it not for the inhabitants, but I can tolerate them most days. And when I need a break from everything I have the Atlantic ocean 5 miles away or 1 hour on my boat through the canals in my backyard. Nothing like being in big blue at night as a full moon rises on a clear night to make you feel like the luckiest bastard on earth. I have been blessed with a beautiful family and plenty of health. Everything else is gravy.

To give another example relating to Joe's excellent discussion of wealth creation, another industrial waste oil comes to mind which was successfully rebranded and marketed as a "food product". Cottonseed oil was industrial waste until it was rebranded and marketed as Crisco and people were shamed in the advertising into cooking the "modern" way instead of cooking with animal oils. It was not known at the time that the human body suffered inflammatory reactions from the omega 6 in most seed oils (commonly marketed as vegetable oils even though cotton, rapeseed, and others are not humanly consumable vegetables). An increase in cardiovascular disease was and is a direct result. Omega 6 is bad, omega 3 from animals is good. (Marketing sidebar: rapeseed oil was tough to sell to housewives so the govt of Canada came up with the name Canola oil to market it better)

To Joe's point, it's another example of innovation creating wealth from waste. And a few unintended consequences.

Edit-
NOTE: Soybean oil and corn oil have similar amounts of bad omega-6 as cottonseed oil and should also not be used for cooking, in my opinion.

Some might argue that covid vaccines are another great example of creating wealth through innovative marketing of turning a waste product into gold.

What boat do you have?

Sometimes, I think that's what keeps me going. 6 more months til boating season...

I just brought my boat to the winter storage yard over the weekend. There is a ~20' checkmate there with a 200hp optimax on consignment. Hmmmm

All you RV'ers: why choose an RV instead of an equivalently equipped trailer?

I feel for you. Boating season is any day it's not blowing 15+ from the north around here. At least for me and the Mako 232 I have. Hope to be going out tomorrow with my son since he has a day off from school. Kings, mahi, and maybe my first ever wahoo are possible. Gotta get back early since I'll be loading the truck to go autocrossing this weekend with a friend of mine.

And locals around want people to stop coming to Florida.
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So you can tow your race car...

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Pics of the inside of the trailer please.

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I grew up in south FL, Pompano, Ft Lauderdale & then Coral Springs. I miss it often, especially the fishing. My favorite was to fish all the locks and bridges west of Pom, Ft Lauderdale & Hollywood for snook. It was a different time then. Today I bass fish professional team events from my 21xhp Triton.

I'm using the term "RV" in a broad sense, to include trailers.

Right now, I use small Class Cs, as that's the easiest thing to rent. When I am finally able to purchase something of my own for full-time use, it'll probably be a smallish TT, such as an Arctic Fox 25Y, plus a Ford F-350.




This is definitely true.

In my travels, I have met a lot of folks younger than myself who are full-timers. All of them have career skills which lend themselves to remote work. Graphic design, web design, accounting, that sort of thing.

I envy these folks. The career I chose doesn't lend itself to such a mode, and to be honest, I feel like I'm too old to learn and become proficient in a completely new field.

That's the only reason I haven't hit the road already. I'd like to have, but given that I have done nothing but radio & TV for the past 25 years, I kinda feel like I'm best to stick it out in that field until I have accumulated enough saved wealth to be able to comfortably retire with no plans to return to the workforce.

What happens after I reach the point where my body is no longer able to cope with the boondocking lifestyle? I honestly don't know. Longevity doesn't exactly run in either side of my family, and as I have no dependents, I don't really see the need to continue living beyond that point. As such, I don't really intend to start doing the normal stuff that men in their 50s do, like having regular doctor visits and getting prescribed medication for whatever various deviations from norm they exhibit (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.)

If I happen to break a leg, then sure, I'll go see a doctor about that. But I see no compelling reason to try to artificially prolong my life for as long as possible, so that I can spend a decade or two sitting around in some retirement community in Florida being bored.