Hello everyone,
I’ve been reading this blog and MMM since March 2016 when I first heard about this in the New Yorker. In some ways I’m pretty shy and usually not much of a “joiner” of communities.
Meyers Briggs says I’m an INFP “Mediator” personality. And it’s true, I usually look for ways for people to get along. I admire confrontational people, but I’m not one of them.
At 48 I don’t really know if I belong here. When I was younger I was more frugal by necessity. I eschewed spending money on temporary pleasures, e.g. going out to eat, because I was always saving for CDs or a new musical instrument. So the idea wasn’t really about saving but I always made sure I had some extra cash around.
In school I studied psychology and then classical music. Finished up with a master’s.
I spent a couple years as a financial consultant and broker asst (def did not have the personality one needs to succeed in getting clients and convincing them of what to do).
I moved from Washington, DC to the SF Bay Area.
I got married to a hard working doctor who is also classical organist. I was in a situation at age 31 where within reason I could have virtually anything I wanted and I did some of that (musical keyboard instruments, art supplies, some trips etc). Spent time composing classical music and studying piano/harpsichord.
At 33 I started some private lessons to become an oil painter (other people can decide if I’m an artist. I just love the act of painting and took it seriously). For me there’s nothing like painting, playing the piano, and sometimes composing music. Am at a place with music where people pay me for lessons, I make a small youtube income from some older videos, and at a place with painting where I’ve sold several for upwards for $850. I’m proud of that. I recently decided I’m going to give away most of my paintings, it feels better artistically and I’m fortunate that I can afford it.
But I had these constant nagging background questions of neurotic agony:
I’ve always agonized about money. How would I survive as a musician?
And since being married to a supportive man, what am I without a full time job? Am I even a “real person”? Will there be enough money for me to survive off of investments and part time income? Am I fool for not working much (at a job) for the past 18 years? How would I ever explain that huge gap in my resume? Am I squandering time? Shouldn’t I be making a lot more out of my life? And on and on and on. My strategy had been to just get lost in painting or music and push a lot of these questions to the side. I’d be concerned with artistic matters and growth and not down to earth realities. That escapism worked for a while. Then about 4 years ago our financial consultant said he’d rerun the numbers and found that ours savings would fail in a far number of scenarios. That the answer was to get a full time job for at least 10 years. So I started up again on all the gnawing questions listed above. This stressed me out quite a bit (just exactly what am I qualified to do and do I truly have to go to a cubicle or stand on my feet selling food 40 hrs a week for 10 more years?)
So why ERE? What’s the relevance?
Then this past December I found out how low cost it is to invest using discount brokerages for the trades (the discounts used to not be so steep when I first checked back in the mid 90’s). And I realized our broker had started to push our accounts into yearly fee based ones. I fired the broker and took over the accounts (oh yeah, those two years I spent as a broker at Merrill Lynch were about to come in handy) once I realized the amount of $ he thought I’d need to make at a day job was about the same we’d save by investing the money ourselves. I basically would have been earning money to pay HIS income.
So since December 2015 I’ve taken a much more active role in examining our investments and expenses. I could see a lot of lowing hanging fruit on where to cut back. In March I started reading up on ERE and MMM began to slowly make the changes I’m in the process of making now. Besides the practicalities of cutting the land line, learning to cook a lot more, and so on, the biggest and truly profound changes have all been mental. I realized its far better to cut costs and save than try and earn that money. Our tax bracket ensures that too. Therefore I finally let go of worries about careerism (old ideas like, “But it’s not too late, I could STILL go to law school!” are gone). For me, that was huge.
I also realized that I was clinging to some attitudes that were putting me in a mental box. One of the biggest was the idea that I was entitled to stay in my house for the rest of my life (but wouldn’t have enough income to support the ongoing expenses). Being willing to move was a huge change for me. In fact, the idea of downsizing is very empowering.
DH is amazing man. Still working as a full time doctor at age 87. (not a typo) He’ll work as long as he possibly can. In every couple one is bound to leave earth before the other but in our case, I’m acutely aware that the time is truly limited. It’s a poignant feeling for sure. Financially (income and decisions) he’d always been the senior partner to my junior and now I’m coming of age. My life is very tied up with his and he has some amazing frugal characteristics (he was born the year of the 1929 stock market crash) and in other ways sees no problem with spending pretty decent chunks of money from time to time.
So what I’m looking to do is preserve our wealth/assets, continue with my equiv of a four hour work week (piano teaching, lite medical billing for DH, a small ongoing yearly passive income from YouTube music videos), and gain a lot more skill in DIY areas of my life. It’s like I’ve got the artistic part of “Renaissance man” down but need to grow with the other aspects (not calling repairmen when things break, using up what I have, gardening and lots of other stuff).
I’d already not been working full time all these past 17 years but now I’m in a new place - one where I’ve given myself the mental freedom of not worrying about it (what it looks like to other people, what is does to my self esteem, worries about future $ and all that) because it all drains away from my passion as a painter. The worry had been a constant low level background drain on my spirit and now I’m feeling the freedom instead.
I don’t know if I’ll ever go so far on the Wheaton scale as Jacob and some of the others around here but I see it as a journey. And I’m excited about that. (Health willing) I’m looking forward to much more rich and full second half of life.
In any case, it’s refreshing to see an online community where people stay dignified and steer clear of immature ad hominem attacks. Cheers for you all!
TL;DR: An aging artist worried about having enough money to survive without a day job, found MMM & ERE and realized that he’ll probably be fine with current assets as long as he develops DIY skills to cut costs and continues more personal growth.
Marriage certainly eases the whole process of sharing your life legally and financially. I'm glad you were finally able to have that.