This year I had more than just monetary goals. They were:
My Mom has been going through old emails to paint a picture of all the places we’ve traveled together. During her investigation she stumbled across an absolutely hilarious email I sent her 5 years ago. It was a response to an email she sent me with a link to an article about the different ways to retire early. Let’s see what my response was 5 years ago: Continue reading “5 Years and Changing Perspectives”
An article I read this morning made me realize something: early retirement is inevitable. I currently have almost a $200,000 net worth (so close!). I could stop saving now, not touch my money and let it grow. If I did that then based on historical averages I would have enough money to retire at 43 years old. That’s 12 years before my mom and 19 years before the earliest social security payout options without me adding another penny to my accounts. I could suddenly quintuple my lifestyle, live like that for the next 15 years and still retire earlier than I could have ever imagined. That’s INSANE! I might start thinking of all the money I invest from this moment as money that’s buying back my time between 32 and 43 years of age. I’m slowly rolling back the clock. I like that visual. Even if I do nothing I will get there. And fast. Let’s do this!
I received a bit of a shock last week. My Mom is applying to jobs. She’s been retired for 2 years and left corporate America at 55 after working 30 years in jobs she hated. I was more shocked to discover she’d been keeping this from me for a while. That was the saddest part. She thought I would yell at her. I didn’t. Continue reading “Tossing Early Retirement and Trading Money for Time”
One of my favorite bloggers at ThinkSaveRetire.com retired in December. His wife just retired and they’re setting ‘sail’ in their Airstream to tour the country full time. He tweeted that he’s already starting to hate weekends because there are all these people at their campground when it was lovely and empty throughout the week. That got me thinking: that’s a whole other reason to retire. I’ve only ever gone places when everyone else is there. Spring break, Christmas break, Weekends. What would it be like to be able to live my entire life off-peak? To hike famous mountains with no one around on a Monday morning? That sounds absolutely amazing to me. Continue reading “More Reasons I Want To Retire”
WARNING: Prepare yourself for a seriously “first world problem” piece of whininess.
I’m bored 🙂 . The key to long term investing success is to set it and forget it: put your money in the market and let it ride. Since we are entering a new year I still had things to optimize: how much should I try to spend so I can save the maximum amount with my new salary? Would I get my bonus? If so, how would that increase my savings rate? How much of my budget should I allocate to vacations? Should I travel hack more of my flights? Sadly all of that has come to an end. I’ve solved them all and booked all my flights until March 2018. Now I seem to just be waiting for the end of each month so I can budget my money, move it into my investments and update my spreadsheets. This process sadly only takes a few minutes. Then I’m back to waiting. Continue reading “Autopilot”
I’ve always been fairly good with money, but I never realized the power of investing and compound interest until I was well into adulthood.
My Prototype
I was more of a “hide it under your mattress” hoarder of money –which I now know is a surefire way to deplete money’s buying power through inflation — but as a young kid I had no idea. At age 7, I tried my luck at money lending to my step-siblings. That didn’t go too well, since I didn’t have debt collectors at my disposal and they had a hard time taking their youngest sibling seriously. Growing up my parents paid us for chores done around the house. When we received the money (usually $1 per chore) we were shocked to discover that we only received $0.33 for every dollar. “Taxes and Social Security” my Mom said.
Continue reading “How I Navigated My Finances”
In my 2016 State of the Union post I mentioned that I’ve changed my FIRE timeline twice in the past year. Last January I ran the numbers and decided that no matter what I was retiring on the eve on my 30th birthday in October of 2019. To accomplish this I decided that I would live on $14,000 a year, which is $4,000 less than my projected annual spend based on my current living situation ($18,000). I discovered and researched a large list of side hustles that could bring this minimal amount of income to make up the difference and discovered that that same $4,000 is what I usually spend on opulent vacations – which I assume I’ll need less of when my entire life is a vacation. Continue reading “Extending My Timeline to 2022: I Don’t Hate My Job”