[cko]

I've never been a big spender and I likely never will be, so it's not like I sacrificed much in getting to this point. An 80% saving rate for 9 working years while being lucky to invest starting 2011 goes pretty far.

If financial independence is its own cage, I'm not willing to leave.

I can't say I regret it - perhaps I should have had something else cooking during my working years that doesn't include blogging about FI.

I suspect most people are like me (and not Elon) - without a carrot or stick, a kind of meaninglessness sets in.

[shrimpx]

Are you concerned about events that might cause your wealth to disappear or be drastically reduced? For example my old CPA was forced to come out of retirement and restart his CPA work because his wealth was drastically reduced in the 2008 crisis. It seems you'd have to have extreme trust in your risk mitigation in order to begin to "do nothing," for possibly decades while the skills that made that money atrophy.

[cko]

I am definitely risk-averse. For that reason my savings rate is still pretty high despite a much lower income nowadays. So my only risk mitigation is "spend as little as possible without feeling deprived" - but sure, everything can crash all at once.

Because of this risk, I keep thinking about keeping myself economically relevant. I've been in this Resistance (as Pressfield would call it) limbo for almost two years but here's hoping I do something about it.