Life on Today Purpose

When to retire early

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How much is enough asks how much. This asks when — and the answer turns out to be less about a net-worth number than about recognising a window that is already open.

The baseline numbers

What people actually do (US data, from a financial planner’s review of the retirement research):


Average US retirement age	62
Retire between 61 and 65	over half
Out of the workforce before 60	nearly 1 in 5
Surveyed “ideal” age	63

63 is defensible on paper — still healthy, Medicare close, decades of compounding behind you. But nobody stumbles into early retirement. Retiring a decade or more early means a longer runway to fund and a bigger healthcare gap to bridge, so it has to be built toward deliberately.

Ten steps to a happier life

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ten practical shifts from Pieter Hintjens — founder of the ZeroMQ project — for becoming happier and making the people around you happier too. No money or magic required, just a change in how you see the world, yourself, and others: “Happiness… comes from your own actions” (the 14th Dalai Lama).

1. Invest in your senses

Feed body and mind well — cook your own food and make it taste good. Notice beauty on purpose: photograph what strikes you, play music that moves you, wear clothes that feel good, walk the city at night in the rain. Texture, not just achievement, is part of a good life.

Win the life game

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A compact set of life-operating principles I keep returning to. The unifying idea: the scarce resource is time, so bias hard toward meaning and toward acting now.

The three rules

Win the life game (Graham Weaver, life principles):

Play the game that stirs your blood — do what you love.
Play with people you admire — choose who you spend your life around.
Play the game now — the worst answer is “not now” (so when?).

These three are the external game. Weaver’s own later talk argues the external game is only half of it and that the half most people skip is the interior one — see win without crushing your soul.