Marshall's Reviews > Early Retirement Extreme: A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Financial Independence

This is a pretty awful guide to early retirement and financial independence. He talks about the subject only tengentially, while the main content of the book is his philosophies about living, working, spending, and education. For example, he spends a chapter on the differences between the renaissance man, businessman, working man, and salary man, complete with a graph broken into four quandrants. In another chapter, he talks about how some expertise is "modularized" or "strongly connected."

In the second section, he gives a list of ways to save money that will probably make you feel very badass and all, but won't save you much money (taking cold showers, seriously?). He goes on at length about not-very-useful information such as the optimal design of an efficient house being rectangular. When discussing whether it's best to rent or own, he gives you the NAV equation and capitalization rate. When discussing health, rather than talking about things like, oh I don't know, how to save on health care?, he gives a tutorial on functional fitness and high-intensity interval training.

The very end of the book is about finances. Only in passing does he mention vital information like withdrawal rate and how to invest for income, only to focus on pages of mathematical equations with no explanation.

When it was over, I felt like I just watched a physicist mentally masturbate for hours. I got nothing from this book, and if I were the target audience, it would have only served to discourage me from financial independence. Luckily, I'm already financially independent, and I know it does not need to be nearly this complex or "extreme." But even if it did, this book contributes nothing to the subject. I know his idea was to give "strategies and tactics" not a game plan, but the details are kinda important. It's not like a thorough bibliography was supplied, either. 1984 and The Fountainhead don't count.