Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash

Hello and welcome to another installment of “Inside Purple’s Head.” Buckle up kiddos…

The Retirement Schedule

Sooo I changed my mind again 🙂 . I mentioned in my last update that I was reconsidering following my original plan of writing 4 of these weekly updates and then switching to monthly. Well, after I released the last one, I realized I felt sad that this series was halfway over already.

Luckily I remembered that this is my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want 😉 so this series has been extended…until I get sick of it. I suspect that will be by the end of this year so 12 weeks of updates or a total of 3 months of weekly retirement updates is the current plan.

If it turns out I lose steam before that or start feeling sad that 12 weeks are almost up, I reserve the right to change my mind again 🙂 . This is The Purple Way!

So, here is the latest schedule for this blog through the end of the year:

11/03: Early Retirement Week 4 Update
11/10: Early Retirement Month 1: Ask Me Anything
11/17: Early Retirement Week 5 Update
11/24: Early Retirement Week 6 Update
12/01: Early Retirement Week 7 Update
12/08: Early Retirement Week 8 Update
12/15: How Much I Spent In 2020
12/17: Early Retirement Week 9 Update
12/22: 2020 Goals And Accomplishments
12/24: Early Retirement Week 10 Update
12/29: How Much I Made (And Saved) In 2020
12/31: Early Retirement Week 11 Update
1/5: Reflections On 6 Years Of Blog Writing
1/12: Early Retirement Week 12 Update

As you can see something strange happens halfway through December: These retirement updates switch to a bonus post on Thursdays! There are several posts I do annually every December, specifically: How much I spent, How much I saved and What I accomplished. Those will take the hallowed Tuesday spot so you will receive two weekly posts for a few weeks with the retirement updates on Thursday instead. I’m going to distract myself from the lack of sunlight in the northern hemisphere by bringing y’all more posts. Let’s see if it works 🙂 .

What Did I Do This Week?

Well, this is how the week started out:

[Monday morning discussions]
Partner: What are you thinking about?
Me: I don't want to say because I know it sounds ridiculous.
Partner: Say it.
Me: I have too much to do today 😬
Partner: 🤨
Me: I warned you 🤣!

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 19, 2020

In my defense, I will list what I had going on that day and maybe you’ll understand my thought process (most likely not, but I did warn you that I would most likely become increasingly unrelatable in retirement so here we are 🙂 ). Please secure your seat belts for an essay complaining about inefficient systems. These things all started Monday morning:

I voted! I am registered in Washington State, which is amazing in that they have mail-in ballots, but since I wasn’t sure where I would be during this election, I didn’t provide a forwarding address (like my genius partner did…) and instead was able to vote online as an absentee.

However, this involved first voting online and then printing a page for me to sign (who has printers in 2020?), signing it in the exact way I signed my driver’s license (they came back to me last vote because my signature looked a little different – good looking out, but it is me I promise!), taking a picture of the signature page and then emailing them all my information.

Obviously that’s easier than waiting in line at the polls (and it allows me to research all candidates and bills at my leisure), but the printer requirement got me for a second 😉 . I wasn’t sure where to turn, but then heard my SIL had a printer.

Unfortunately, when she had a second to try and print this page (in the middle of her busy work day) we discovered the printer was broken – Ugh! So my Mom had to come to the rescue and give me the printed page when she visited a few days later. Thank you! Civic duty complete 🙂 .

I signed up for World Nomads Travel Insurance as part of my stopgap travel health insurance plan until international travel is available and because this Monday morning decided to not go smoothly, there was a hiccup while signing up. After dropping almost $500 for 6 months of coverage and seeing the hold on my credit card appear, I did not receive a confirmation email, so I was confused if the transaction went through properly.

I was also not able to see an active policy when I logged into my account and sadly had not screenshotted the case number like I usually do when reaching confirmation screens. So I ended up calling the company and was happy that they picked up immediately and were quite helpful – they said the transaction most likely went through so I shouldn’t buy another policy, but that it might take a bit to send the confirmation email and that they would call me back as soon as they saw the policy in their system.

About 30 minutes after I hung up the phone, I did receive the confirmation email (phew!) and they did keep their word and call me back, which also allowed me to ask a few follow up questions I had about the policy. By midday all was resolved and I left out a sigh of relief that one item was checked off my list.

I checked on my 401(k) rollover that I initiated on the 8th. Usually it doesn’t take nearly this long for my accounts to rollover and knowing that a check for over $100,000 is going through the mail was a bit nerve-wracking for me 🙂 . So I logged onto Nationwide to see what was up and when I tried to view my account, I got an error message that the website was down…of course it was 🙂 .

So then I called Nationwide and was happily surprised that they picked up right away. They checked the status of the rollover and saw that it was waiting on the financial advisor my company uses to approve it. Siiiigh – it’s not enough that you lied to me for 3 years about what funds were available in our retirement plan to line your own pockets, but you have to delay me getting to my beloved Vanguard as well? Fine! So I thanked Nationwide and emailed my company again asking what was up.

They emailed that financial advisor and he responded immediately (interesting…) and asked for my contact information (I was CCed on the original email…I’m right here bro!). Then we played phone tag because he needed to verify my identity since my account had “a large dollar amount”  in it 😉 to make sure this rollover request was actually coming from me. I appreciate that. He promised to then approve the rollover and once again it was time to wait. Luckily 5 days later, I got an indication that this process was moving forward:

[I check my net worth and see it's $116K less than the last time I checked]
Purple Thoughts: Oh interesting – I guess the market went down.
[Checks market – It's up📈]
Purple Thoughts: Well that's weird🤔
[5 minutes later]
Purple Thoughts:..I rolled over my 401k didn't I… pic.twitter.com/qOFeOpnBTI

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 24, 2020

I followed up with my company about my missing salary and bonus. I was supposed to be paid $2,500 that’s part of my salary (but paid as a quarterly bonus because my company is sketchy) and a stretch bonus of up to $1,250 (that I didn’t expect to get per the below tweet). Instead of a max of $3,750, $0 hit my account instead. So I reached out to the accounting department at my old job. They responded with the below:

FURTHER UPDATE: Accounting got back to me saying that "Unfortunately, for the bonus, since you were not an active employee when we did bonus review in October, you didn’t qualify for a bonus" This is a bonus that's part of my salary and covers July-Sept…which I worked. WTFFFF??

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 19, 2020

Unsurprisingly after receiving that note, I took to Twitter and discovered that having to be an employee at the time of the bonus payout, is apparently pretty standard, which would have been great to know 🙂 . Unfortunately, my company never mentioned it or wrote that down anywhere. I was going to respond to HR asking for clarification on the policy and a few people suggested reaching out to my boss instead because Accounting can’t really do anything about it, so that’s what I did.

Luckily my boss responded promptly saying he was looking into it “ASAP” and would get back to me…that’s the last I heard last Monday. On Wednesday, I thanked the Accounting department for their help with the 401(k) rollover above and some missing COBRA documentation and received this response:

UPDATE: I replied to Accounting saying thx for the info (since I'm discussing it with my boss instead). They replied instantly: "I've been discussing the bonus with [Boss] and the other members of the bonus committee and will get back to you by the end of the week." Interesting🤔

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 21, 2020

…and then of course I heard nothing by the end of the week 🙂 . I’ll be following up with them this week to see what the hell is going on, but luckily, it’s basically for the principle of the thing. Yes, they owe me money and should have been more clear with their policies if they never intended to give me this part of my salary at the very least (let alone the bonus), but I don’t NEED this money and I feel very fortunate to say that.

I already have more than the 2 years of spending I aimed to save before I quit my job. I’ve been hoarding cash like Smaug, but will continue fighting for the money they owe me. It’s funny to me that we couldn’t just part on amicable terms – they really seem to want to remind me of how happy I should be to not have to deal with this bullshit on a day-to-day basis 🙂 .

I tried to pay a speeding ticket that I got on our drive down to Hilton Head last week and was warned on the ticket that it would take 3-5 business days to show up in the system. I was asked for a case number and was told there was nothing in the system with those numbers. It’s been 10 business days so far and there’s still nothing in the system.

I even reached out to their “Help Desk” which turned out to be an automated text that told me to literally call the judge of that town…wow. Way to escalate. However, if I am still not able to pay this online with my court date is fast approaching, I’m going to use that option: call the judge and send a check (once again, is this the 1800s?) through the snail mail if I have to. Why is nothing easy 🙂 ?

I called my Seattle dentist and gave them hundreds of dollars. Apparently this dentist’s office didn’t check my records when I asked for the cost in advance of filling a few cavities and after the procedure, they realized everything wasn’t covered, so I had to call them to pay additional dollars for that (Lovely 🙂 ).

They emailed me asking for money at the beginning of the month, I replied asking how I should pay them since their instructions were unclear and they said to call them during business hours. I finally got around to it and on the phone they said “we have a credit card on file – do you want us to charge that?” to which I replied “yes” and then wondered why this couldn’t have been done over email since they didn’t even check any identifying information over the phone 🙂 .

I checked if CitiBank had sent the $1,000 check they promised me to reimburse the flight I’m no longer taking to Argentina. American Airlines refunded the money to a credit card that I had with CitiBank, but was since closed, so they had to send me a check in the mail. I am happy to say that one thing did go right this week and I got the check and deposited it with my phone into my bank account (yay technology)!

So, that was Monday morning! Lesson learned: I need to chill the fuck out 🙂 . I also need to space this stuff out more and learn to be more calm when systems aren’t working properly. I’ve got nothing but time so it’s not a huge imposition. I need to become more of a chill bro 🙂 .

Overall though I’m in awe that I used to deal with this shit WHILE also working and pretending to be a functioning human being – Wow. Applause all around. So after that wild Monday morning I rounded out the week with way less accomplishments:

• I scheduled another COVID test for a few days before my Mom and I road trip to the northeast
• I recorded episodes for the Yo Quiero Dinero and Inspire to FIRE podcasts
• I video chatted with friends including Modest Millionaires
• I wrote a guest post that will come out December 9 on ESI Money
• I started working on my Mom’s Q&A post that I crowdsourced questions for on Twitter
• I was featured in an episode of the Mo’ Money Podcast: Listen to that here.

In addition to the above, I also stayed with my Mom in an Airbnb she got nearby, went on new nature walks and checked two more movies off my Retirement Movie List (see below). It was cool to barrel down my checklist, but I need to do WAY less stuff next week. I’m totally failing at the #SlugLife!

Tonight's "Retirement Film" is the iconic The Devil Wears Prada because I would routinely put it on before working all nighters to hit a (new and sudden) client deadline to convince myself that it could always be worse. Let's see how it feels to watch this as an early retiree🍿.. pic.twitter.com/Vc0XATmWqi

— A Purple Life (@APurpleLifeBlog) October 22, 2020

Physical

Sleep

Sleep this week has been a bit all over the place. One night I was sleepy and decided to go to bed early. I laid down around 8pm and couldn’t fall asleep for the life of me. I was in a new space (an Airbnb with my Mom) so not being able to fall asleep immediately or be completely comfortable the first night was not unusual.

I woke up every few hours and 12 hours after lying down initially, I got out of bed still sleepy and also annoyed because I had a full day (of fun) planned and I didn’t want to be sleepy or grumpy during it.

I also didn’t want to make time for a nap later that day and found this to be a funny and pretty ridiculous turn of events. I was stressed that I couldn’t sleep because I wanted to be present for FUN activities instead of wanting to be alert to do my best with work nonsense. I’m a silly goose sometimes 🙂 .

In the grand scheme of things, this was not even a real problem, and I chuckled to myself with how quickly I forgot what a ‘real’ problem was and then got annoyed at myself for basically a made up stressful situation. Despite my sleepiness I had a great day and no one commented on me being sluggish. Once again, I need to chill the fuck out 🙂 .

Food

Food this week has been another stream of deliciousness. I’ve continued to eat when I’m hungry, not limit myself based on carbs or calories and worked on learning to love my new (fuller) body. I’m enjoying what I currently look like and also what I eat.

I’m also starting to contemplate what that means in contrast to my previous ‘goal’ body that I was attempting to maintain. Basically, in the face of something as serious as a pandemic, me fitting into a certain size of pants feels very unimportant – especially when I think I look good thicc 😉 .

Fitness

Our heavy lifting dreams are still on hold. I was warned on Twitter that used and well priced home gym equipment was almost impossible to find while many actual gyms remain closed. My pull up dreams are also not going very well. I wasn’t even able to do a pull-up while my tall-ass partner lifted me up for a VERY assisted workout. Wow. I need to step that up.

My posture goals are going pretty well in that every time I notice I’m slouching, I do correct myself, but luckily for me, I’m usually lying down instead of sitting #Cheating 🙂 . I need to get more legit with this goal…and probably be less supine (noooo…).

In the positive column, I’ve continued to have wonderful, long and frequent walks in nature. Some days, I walked 3.5 miles through the woods and another I walked up and down a neighborhood sidewalk, but I was still moving, exploring and feel like I’m definitely getting more fresh air than I did in my previous life.

Mental

Learning

I’ve always sucked at sleep for many reasons, but one of them is that I’m a very light sleeper. There used to be a tree outside my childhood bedroom that was a home to several birds. These creatures, like most birds, awoke at 4am and loved to loudly proclaim they made it through the night. I’m proud of them for making it – I really am, but 4am is not the optimal time for me to hear about it 🙂 .

As a result, over the years I developed a bit of a contentious relationship with these birds. When my parents decided to cut down that tree because its roots were messing with the house’s septic tank, I must admit, I didn’t bat an eye (#Heartless). All this to say that since I started learning to identify birds and bird calls in particular, I realized this past week that when I hear them – even early in the morning – I actually smiled instead of scowling into my pillow.

I rolled over in bed and thought “That’s a Carolina Wren! Good Morning!” So basically birding has turned me into a weird, happy person who doesn’t mind getting awakened early by bird songs. It’s a weird and unexpected shift, but I’ll take it!

Now that we’re done with that interlude, let’s go back to my favorite segment: Fun Facts Nobody Asked For! Here’s what I learned and explored this week:

• I continued to use the amazing (free!) apps BirdNET and Audubon to identify birds. This week by sight I identified a Northern Cardinal, Carolina Wren and Downy Woodpecker. I also identified a Western Phoebe and Tufted Titmouse by sound (and full disclosure after identifying the last one with BirdNET, I started yelling in excitement so much that I scared the bird away – Oops 🙂 ).
• Overall this week made me think I might be an official birder because I saw a brown bird and I thought “that looks like Carolina Wren.” Then I heard the bird start singing and thought “And that SOUNDS like a Wren!” I then confirmed with these apps that it was in fact a Carolina Wren and patted myself on the back. Where is my trophy?
• I also started identifying more than just birds with the help of the (also free!) iNaturalist app! It helped me identify a wide range of items from flowers to mushrooms to ferns. I learned that the pretty pink flowers I found in the Botanical Gardens are actually Hurricane Lillies, which are native to eastern and southern Asia, but were imported into North Carolina a while ago and now grow wild in the south. I also identified False Turkey-Tail Mushrooms, Honeysuckles, Shield Ferns, White Heath Asters and American Aster Flowers.
• In addition to nature nerdery, my Mom and I decided to memorize the Military Alphabet – which is also the IATA (international air transportation association) alphabet. I always pull it up when I’m talking on the phone with airlines, but my Mom says she never remembers to do that and always wanted to learn it so we taught each other. We ran drills with the names (A=Alpha, B=Bravo etc) until we could do it forwards, backwards and with random long words without thinking. Hopefully when we can travel again this makes my phone calls with airlines all the more smooth 🙂
• When researching the military alphabet, we also discovered a fun fact about V=Victor. The Morse Code for “V” is the famous sound at the beginning of Beethoven’s 5th symphony (“dun dun dun duuuuun”) and in WW2 that symphony was played often over the radio to symbolize triumph – or Victory 😉
• While walking nature trails around Georgia, my Mom and I kept seeing Stone Fireplaces in the middle of the woods…with nothing around it. Obviously I assumed these are locations where serial killers burn their bodies in secret 🙂 . We saw 3 of these in different parks over a few weeks and then I finally learned from a plaque in one of the parks that these stone fireplaces used to be within wood cabins, but the cabins are now gone and only the fireplaces remain – BOOM! So sadly the actual explanation is less terrifying than I thought 🙂
• We ate Jalapeños a while ago and were commenting that they seem to taste hotter if they’re grilled. I was curious if that had any basis in science and did some research and found that basically the jalapeño doesn’t get hotter, but it might seem hotter to us: “The heat of jalapeños (or any other pepper) are based on the amount of capsaicin…If anything, intense heat will destroy capsaicin, so they wouldn’t become hotter when grilled. However, what you may notice is that most of the capsaicin is contained in the white membrane around the seeds, and this membrane may break down during grilling, releasing capsaicin throughout the pepper. So the green parts of a jalapeño which normally wouldn’t be very hot now taste much hotter.” Interesting!
• I’ve continued my love of Crunching Leaves on all my walks. Luckily crunchy leaves are becoming more abundant as fall settles over the south. My Mom continues to make fun of me when I do this and at the disappointed sounds I make when a crunchy looking leaf ends up not making a sound – I’m may be a weirdo 🙂
• And finally, I watched my ‘sister-in-law’ edit a few photos in Lightroom and while doing so she explained to me what she was doing. It’s shocking how different you can make a photo look with a few clicks. First I need to learn how to use a DSLR camera, but after that I might have to dive into photo editing as well. It looks like fun!

Creativity

As I mentioned above, I wrote a guest post this week and when I was editing it, something interesting happened. When I revisited the post after letting it sit for a while, I was able to see missing leaps of logic that even my (fantastic) editor didn’t bat an eye at 😉 .

After noticing this and reflecting, I think I’m getting better at understanding and being able to pinpoint and tweak the flow of logic within the words I write. I’m starting to see links between topics as actual strings in my mind that are either clearly connected, not fully connected or not connected at all.

It’s kind of weird and not what I am used to seeing when reading long form writing, but here we are. It’s interesting that my mind is starting to make me see these things in a visual fashion (I’m a visual learner in general 😉 ) and I think it’s making me a better editor and writer in general. I’m learning!

Mobility

I’ve continued to be in love with my new phone (a Moto G Stylus) and I keep realizing new ways it allows me to leave my computer mostly untouched during the day, which was one of my goals in retirement (unplugging from my nemesis the computer screen). This new phone has a wild amount of storage – 128GB compared to my previous phone’s 10GB.

With my old phone, I had to constantly delete photos or remove an app to make way for another one, but on this new phone I downloaded everything I needed then everything I wanted and then some things I just wanted to try out and there is still room to spare!

As a result, I’ve been using my phone for things that I would usually wait to do on a computer because now I have an app for that 🙂 . I feel like a Zoomer or something! It’s kind of like how I evolved after I started to work remotely. I began not needing a large work monitor in addition to my laptop screen.

I actually had a large monitor at home, but over time, stopped using it even though it was a requirement for my productivity during my first 5 years of work. I’m evolving into one of those people who only needs a phone instead of a laptop or desktop computer. So mobile!

Money

A lot of my productivity items from this week involved money flying out of my wallet – and I’ve continued to let go of those amounts without blinking. This includes the almost $4,000 that I most likely will not be receiving from my company and the $116,000 that appeared to be ‘gone’ from my net worth before I remembered I was in the middle of a 401(k) rollover.

My mind is completely disconnected from the budget miser-ness I expected to take over me once I stopped making a steady paycheck. It’s weird and I don’t get it, but I do prefer it to the alternative so let’s see how long this blasé attitude continues!

Emotional

Be Present

Despite my comment about becoming a mobile warrior (instead of a keyboard warrior 😉 ), I have been doing a really good job of being more present in my life. When hanging with people, I usually put my phone on Airplane mode or Do Not Disturb.

I also often don’t look at my phone or even know where it is. Being disconnected from the constant updates and information the (wonderful) internet provides, has been as freeing as I suspected it would be. I love not being tethered to technology and instead being able to just use it as a tool when I choose to do so.

Thoughts On Time

I’ve continued to not know what time it is 🙂 and I’ve started to figure out time in abstracts, such as seeing that the sun is in the living room so it must be around 3pm or just keeping track of time based on something I want to do (like knowing the Thai place opens at 4pm).

Originally I had the goal to watch the sunrise (if I was up) and sunset every day because usually it looks completely different day to day. But I’m realizing that instead of having something to do at a set time every day, I prefer to focus on whatever activity is happening in my commune at a given time. It’s cool to catch the sunrise or sunset at times, but doing so is not the bookends of my day that I planned for them to be pre-retirement. Maybe that will change when I’m back at a villa with an unobstructed eastern or western facing ocean view 😉 . 

Stress

Y’all had some really interesting insights on stress in my last post. I’ve continued to reflect on the type of stress work brings and why it feels so different from other types of stress, such as school stress.

I’m starting to think it’s because your work gives you a paycheck, which determines if you and the people you love eat that week 🙂 . School is like that in abstract – or at least I was told my grades would translate to a ‘good college’ (whatever that is) and then a ‘good job’ (whatever that is), though in practice I haven’t found that to be completely accurate.

A commenter mentioned that work stress is more malicious because it’s constant instead of acute (like needing to run from a predator) and that work stress sucks even more because it’s an (unnecessary?) stress that’s added on top of all the others that just living brings. The cumulative effect is the bad part. I think both are great points and are giving hints at why work stress is such an issue in our country. I’m going to continue thinking about it 🙂 .

Relationships

Commune living is still going well! Someone asked me what I mean by a “commune” so to clarify: my partner and I are living on the same land as my partner’s brother, his wife and their son. By commune, I just mean that we’re living as a larger family unit with separate houses, but also enjoying communal living with family dinners and bonfires and movie nights.

It’s been a really idyllic way to live so far and I wasn’t sure it would be since I haven’t lived with anyone other than my partner since my less than ideal roommates after college. But this feels very different than a roommate situation since you have your own space and are choosing when you want to interact.

So as a part of this commune-style living, we’ve been having group meals. My ‘brother-in-law’ (BIL for short) is an amazing cook (see below) and has been doing almost all of the cooking since we arrived a month ago (woah – time flies…). In my retired “what time is it?” haze, I would realize the sun was starting to set and get ready to make dinner only to get a text that he had already cooked dinner and it was ready!

I felt like I wasn’t pulling enough weight – though no one commented on that even though we have weekly commune check ins to see if there are any areas for improvement in our living situation together.

To combat this situation, I’ve asked if we could have set days for me to cook so I would be on top of it, but there is a toddler involved and strict schedules don’t seem to always mix with that (understandably), so I’ve changed tactics! I’ve started doing other helpful things to combat my guilt at getting delicious meals prepared for me every night 🙂 .

A toddler (and 4 adults) generate a fair amount of dishes, so every time I notice things stacking up in the sink – even if it’s multiple times a day – I do them. Starting to do this made me feel like I’m helping more even if we’re not dividing all kinds of labor equally. I’ve asked if we could do a more serious chore list as well – we’ll see if that works for everyone. So that’s my new approach to not being a lazy mooch 🙂 !

Conclusion

And that’s what I got up to this week! It seems like fall is finally here in Georgia and we had our first rainy day since moving here. However, it was also 80 degrees earlier that day so my plans of tanning and getting color back are still going well 🙂 . I’m really enjoying fall in the south so far and if memory serves, this is basically what winter will be like as well with the addition of a sweater. Things are going well over here 🙂 .

If you’re interested in the other weekly retirement updates I’ve written, they’re all here:

Weekly

1. Early Retirement Week 1: The Freak Out
2. Early Retirement Week 2: The Vacation
3. Early Retirement Week 3: The Whiplash
4. Early Retirement Week 4: The Heartbeat
5. Early Retirement Week 5: The Election
6. Early Retirement Week 6: The Trophy
7. Early Retirement Week 7: The Train
8. Early Retirement Week 8: The Challenge
9. Early Retirement Week 9: The Question
10. Early Retirement Week 10: The Game
11. Early Retirement Week 11: The Recharge
12. Early Retirement Week 12: The Holiday

How was your week?