Jacob Lund Fisker

Jacob Lund Fisker has lived and worked in three different countries and visited 14 more. He speaks English, Danish, and a depreciating amount of German.

Having pursued a goal of skill-based self-reliance, he has spent less than $7000 per year for the past 15 years while saving the rest of his income and developing the skills to maximize the value of every dollar spent to easily achieve an inconspicuous middle class standard-of-living. This highly unusual behavior of saving money led to financial independence at age 30 and he hasn't needed to work for a living since then.

His main priorities in life are competence, access, and optionality in order to experience the many things in life that can't be bought with money or requires more than two weeks of vacation to experience. This has lead to a rather eclectic set of experiences.

He has lived out of suitcase, out of an RV, and currently lives in a fully paid off house in the outskirts of Chicago. He has a PhD in theoretical physics and he has published over 40 research papers in 10 years of work mostly concerning arcane details about neutron stars, nuclear reactions, and the origin of the elements. He is a self-taught cabinetmaker and has built most of the furniture in his and his wife's home. He was the main trimmer in over 100 yacht races in the San Francisco Bay leading to a couple of top regatta placements. He was also on the winning team as a center forward in the local hockey league four seasons in a row. He has read somewhat over 2000 books as well as a depressingly larger number of inane online comments regarding himself. He wrote the first popular blog on financial independence and extreme early retirement and is often referred to as the grandfather of early retirement blogs despite the fact that people have been doing this for decades before.

He has also been a freelance copy-editor for math and engineering journals, fixed bicycles for a women's shelter, worked as a quant for a financial company, and served two years as a founding member on the board of a nonprofit. He is always open to new experiences especially when they concern the solution of hard problems. Compensation no longer required.