The Over(wo)man Someday?

[zarathustra]

Hello there.
I'm Zarathustra. I'm turning 30 in a few months, and I'm happy to be here (on the forum, and in the living sense).
I feel pretty fortunate regarding my financial journey, and I'll never know for certain the cause(s), but here's my financial CV as far as timeline goes:
My family was upper middle class but you wouldn't know it. There were no lavish vacations or cars or very much eating out at all come to think of it. We camped and cleaned our own house and did our own yard and gardening. My mother took me through a financial class she made up when I finished HS. I watched every month as my mother balanced the checkbook and my dad did our taxes himself every year.
My parents paid my tuition for the first year of college and a small stipend of 400/mo I think. Lucky. I then had scholarships and PT work the rest of the time.
My one bad debt situation was a CC I somehow got probably at one of those evil Freshman booths that I didn't know I had until Jr. year when a renewal card came in the mail (sneaky). Due to typical foils of youth, I wracked up maybe 400 bucks (limit 300) and it got charged off, but the stress and embarrassment from that one incident made me never want to put myself in that situation again.
So I focused on learning about credit scores, hacking mine, building my credit, and living below my means. Many of the things I learned during this "investigation" into credit ended up being more about personal finance knowledge than anything, so woot!
I started the typical 10% 401k, 10% espp contributions at my first real job after college. I also saved an additional 10% that would get eaten up by this or that thing, emergency, or trip. No biggie. I never went into debt again other than a car much later that was paid off early. I was promoted about 5-6 times in 4 years, making for some great salary by the end of it, then laid-off with a re-structure in fall 2010.
I took my savings and generous severance and traveled for several months, then went home and pursued other interests, thinking about what's next. That time that I took to think about what I did and didn't want to do at my next job and in life in general was a very important turning point for me. My "emergency fund" was such a huge blessing in that way. I never felt pressured by lack of funds. Sound familiar?
I got a job in Silicon Valley (moved from Portland, OR) right at that year mark and headed into a new(ish) field. I then started dreaming of travel again, and trying to figure out ways to change my life in such a way that I could have a flexible work-life: plenty of time off to travel, visit friends and family, learn new things, etc.
All the while, being a good saver, I save over 50% of my income already but thought "Hey, I wonder if I could save a LOT more and be able to take off for 2 years and do it all over again? . . . What if I could find a way to live on a minimum wage portion of my salary . . . " I started searching for blogs of people that have done just that and then I found ERE.
I had no idea that I could engineer my finances/life in THIS way to achieve my ideal life.
I'm way too driven towards learning for life to never "work" again, and find that there are things you can learn from the workplace that would be harder to learn elsewhere, but I'd much prefer to feel I have the CHOICE/FREEDOM to find my ideal occupations and focuses.
So . . . thank you Jacob and thank you forum members for offering me a place to learn and share.

[RelicO]

That is excellent. Very nice to read where you are coming from. I agree with the learning for life part and also from seeing some benefit to having a somewhat structured or scheduled day (if that was one of the benefits of work that you were referring to)...Also I am a teacher and really enjoy the service aspect of helping my students and the education process. So I am sort of enjoying my job but also really enjoying being really frugal and accumulating my little perpetuity. And obsessing about investing.
I do think about retiring in a couple years though...We shall see.
Cheers, looking forward to reading more from you.

[Dragline]

Thus she speaks. Welcome.
Your father's name doesn't happen to be Friedrich, does it?

[zarathustra]

tee hee . . . NO silly. but i jokingly refer to "thus spoke zarathrustra" as my bible.