In 2000 when I was reevaluating my finances and studying personal finance I stumbled across the concept of early retirement that I simply hadn't thought of before. I'm many years from being able to retire, but I'm laying the foundation for an early exit.

I'm an on-and-off member of some of the early retirement community forums. I find these to be very useful resources not only for financial wisdom but practialy daily life information, too. Even though many of the regular posters post to more than one site, each site has developed its own character and culture.

• Dory36's Early Retirement Forum: Free to read, free registration to post. This is my favorite of the forums, and I recently helped them migrate to a different forum software. I am currently a forum moderator there and maintain admin rights since the migration. It seems to be the highest traffic ER forum and generally the people are laid-back, helpful and funny although we periodically bicker over suspicious posters or touchy subjects. Dory36 was a member on TMF's boards and created his own when TMF started charging for access. The forum is linked from the popular Retire Early Homepage, and Dory36 is the creator of FireCalc, a safe withdrawal rate calculator based on historical stock returns studies.
• REHP Discussion Board: Free to read, free registration to post. I haven't read this board enough to get a feel for the overall character and culture, however lately I have frequented one part of the board dealing with a notorious controversial poster who has been banned from the other 4 boards listed here; that portion of the site is rather juvenile, yet I post there and participate in the juvenility. The Retire Early Home Page is a wealth of ER information and is the home of intercst (John Greaney) who is seen by many as the one who started the current ER community.
• Raddr's Early Retirement and Financial Strategy Board: Free to read, free registration to post. Raddr is a longtime member of the community who started his own research site and forum. He has created and published various reports on investing and retiring, and I presume this is thoroughly discussed in his forums.
• NoFeeBoards.com: Free to read, free registration to post. El Supremo aka ES is the site owner; he's been around a long time, but I'm not familiar with when he joined the community. The board features the Index Funds Board and even has a section on gambling.
• The Motley Fool Discussion Boards' Retire Early Home Page: (TMF) Paid registration to read or post. A few years ago this was a free resource, but in 2001 they decided to start charging. Some of the regulars have been comped subscriptions annually, but I didn't make the cut, so I haven't been back because I'm not going to pay when the other free resources are available. There is a lot of great historical discussion, and the discussion continues, but I can't read it anymore. It is my understanding that this board was created and named for intercst's REHP, and intercst is the anchor of that board.