George the original one wrote:
Financially, you've been calculating a comfortable path. Have you considered taking social security at an earlier age? Or various short-term extreme paths? Like two years at barebones spending giving you X% increase for the remaining 16 years?
Hi George--sounds like you've got an awesome future awaiting you at the riverside!
I maintain a number of options in the back of my mind, and varying my SS start date is one of them. But I haven't explicitly laid any variants into "the plan" as represented by my spreadsheet from you-know-where. I will also have a small retirement annuity that I could similarly play around with the start date on (get a few more dollars each month for starting later, a few less for starting earlier). There are a lot of possible combinations so just to preserve my sanity the baseline is to take the annuity at the earliest opportunity and SS deferred to get the maximum amount per month.
I do intend to test my limits when it comes to keeping a lid on spending, especially the first few years before I can start the annuity. That's part of the "challenge" for me. I have detailed goals for what I would like my spending bounds to be, and think they are reasonable, but I test my plan against what I have actually achieved in real life.
sky wrote:I am right there as well, could quit today, but the money is good. I have one big project to complete, and after next week, my heavy lifting on the project is done. The project will peak in public visibility in September/October and will be done in mid-November. I'm thinking about staying on till the end of the year if only to leave this circus while most everybody is on vacation, so I can just slip behind the curtain and disappear.
The results from my mom's PET scan were unfavorable and indicated the cancer has spread. The war is not over but the sum of the lost battles is taking its toll. Chemo is next.
One of my motivations to strive for ER was to get back home in time to spend some good years with my family as I've been away for more than thirty years now. There's still a chance for that, of course, but I'm having to accept that I might not be completely successful in that endeavor. I shouldn't do it, but today I can't help looking back at all the things I could have done differently through the years. I suppose it's okay to allow all those thoughts to come so long as I let them go and do what I can, which is to simply do the best I can today.
Anyway, I'm probably going to step away and retreat inward for a time. It's my M.O. for dealing with difficult things. I'll probably appear scarce around here, though I might check in quietly from time-to-time. In life priorities can shift quickly.
I'm sorry, Dave. Don't beat yourself up. You have no idea how things would have turned out if you'd done some things differently. We always assume that things would have turned out better, but who knows?
I hate to hear that Dave. This isn't an easy road for you and your family. My experience with this has left me with one piece of advice in situations like this...just forgive everyone for everything. This includes yourself.
I have enjoyed reading your journal. Sorry to hear about your mum. If you get to stay with your work in October in a different role will your income level stay the same or reduce? Have you thought about doing any consulting work? I love the idea of being able to work remotely at some time from some little hermitage on a remote NZ beach. Pull out the latop and sit on the porch plotting away while watching the waves. Imagine if you could do something like that from your cabin and sell your house in the suburbs.
I'll gradually edit this over the next day or two to refine the specifics.
Financially it's been a down quarter, with my net worth falling by $11,300 and my invested assets falling by $16,900. That's actually reflective of about $35,000 actual losses partially offset by savings contributions for the quarter. I've revised the metrics I use to measure my progress. I'll spare the sleepy details but I'm about $130,000 short of the invested asset total I would like to have for voluntary ER. It would take about 2 years with flat markets to achieve that. I think I am FI at this point, although to exercise that independence would leave me with less margin and/or a more austere lifestyle than I desire.
I've had a good quarter (for me) spending-wise, with total expenses below $6,200 for the quarter. I attribute the better behavior to increased mindfulness which allows me to skip shortcuts and conveniences without going insane due to boredom and impatience. I'd still like to keep spending below $5,600 per quarter, but I seem to hit a barrier around $2,000/mo that I lack either the courage or will to cross. Year to date my spending is down a little over $2,300 compared to the same period last year. Even when measured in inches, progress is progress.
It is now Autumn which for me is always a time of contemplation, clutter removal, and planning. This one will be more pensive than normal because of the situation back home. I'll probably devote a little more time and resources to traveling over the holidays this year. It will "hurt" the plan, but in the end the plan serves me, I do not serve the plan.
Good job with the spending, it looks like you are making progress to that $5,600/quarter target.
I hope things are going alright back home. And I really like your comment "...but in the end the plan serves me, I do not serve the plan." Great attitude.
I've been trying to stick to a quarterly update period, but just felt like "journaling" today. I'll defer all the financial specifics until the end of December (I've reached a stage in my journey where they don't mean so much as they used to anyway). October was a good month and I made back most of what I lost over the summer. Looking ahead to my year-end goals I'm on track to meet a few and miss a few, not by much either way. One of the nice things about being a habitual data gatherer is that projections become marginally more reliable.
I've been waffling on this for some time, but I decided last week to officially declare myself financially independent as of the end of calendar 2015. It's a brittle form of independence, but I've played a lot of scenarios and I hold up pretty well under most of them. It's my heirs that will have to bear the larger brunt of any financial misfortune that befalls me.
Due to the brittleness, I'll probably not act on it right away. Still I felt it necessary to start accepting that I am FI and start taking full responsibility for the decision to continue working. That sounds sorta odd to type, but what I mean is that there's a certain comfort in rationalizing that I'm going to continue doing the safe thing because I "have to". Really, I'm doing it because I'm a bit of a coward. Prudent, but still driven in part by fear when it comes to the rubber meeting the road on taking my life in a truly new direction. I wish breakfast cereal came fortified with boldness. I also have a habit of being maybe a little too self-deprecating, and it's probably time for me to recognize I've achieved something a little out of the ordinary and marshal some of the energy that comes with that.
I've spent a lot of time of late fending off anxiety. I feel like one of those old cartoon characters that gets a lump from being walloped on the head, then pushes the lump down with his finger only to have it reappear somewhere else. Hopefully by staying mindful of having an above average degree of self determination in the days ahead, my resilience will hold up. If I'm honest, there are few moments these days where I can point to any lack. Better yet is to just accept that I have a lumpy head and honor my life for what it is.
Events with work and family got me off track on preparations to get my house sold. My goal with these couple sentences is to pressure myself into moving ahead with that. There's a heap of static momentum tied up there that will take some energy to overcome. One thing I have recognized about dumping my house, aside from the emotional ghosts of having raised my kids here, is that it marks the beginning of the point of no return. I'm definitely in the at-risk cohort for extended one-more-year-itis.
Last edited by IlliniDave on Mon Nov 02, 2015 8:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
I was thinking about starting a new thread with this, but thought that might be kind of preachy, and that some might view it as contentious on my part. But after typing it up I didn't want to waste it so stuck it in here. I guess it relates to my journey, but only in the sense it captures some mental shifts that happened well before I started this journal.
It’s common (and not unexpected) to find disdain for jobs hovering around the topic of early retirement. For various reasons many early retirees have or will have to spend as much as 2-3 decades working. I am one of them. However, disdain for work is not one of my motivations. It isn’t that I have the perfect job, or lack ambition for a meaningful life and aspire only to be a corporate drone. Especially when I was younger I often found myself dissatisfied and sometimes even angry. But my job was also an efficient way to provide for my family so I worked through the difficulties for the greater good, as it were. Now I’m perfectly okay with my relationship with my job. It came mostly through a better, or at least different, understanding of it in relation to my life on the whole. The following lists the most significant lessons I picked up along the way.
1. Don’t over-identify with my job. Avoid letting social customs trick me into defining myself by my occupation. I am who I am, not how I earn a living. For those lucky enough to find a true vocation, the distinction may well be blurred or nonexistent. No doubt occupation can have a great influence on us, but it doesn’t have to have the last word unless we let it. This extends to not letting occupation-related metrics (pay, title, promotions, number of subordinates, etc.) be my measures of self-worth.
2. Avoid a judgmental outlook towards my work, employer, and people in my workplace. Cramming everything and everyone into either a box that I label “bad” or one I label “good” is a recipe for discontent. The standard for judging will almost always wind up as: good = good for me, bad = not good for me. Virtually no one or nothing out there will be 100% concerned with my best interests except me. If I actively pack the boxes, the bad box will quickly overflow and create a negative outlook.
3. The burden is on me to make my employer happy. Money tends to flow in the opposite direction of happiness. If my employer has happy customers they gladly give him money for whatever good or service he supplies. If what I do makes my employer’s customers happy, he is happy with me, and some of money will flow to me. In time it should be in proportion to how happy I make him. If I take a job and expect to simply show up and sit around waiting for my employer to make me happy, I’m unlikely to succeed. My job happiness comes from first making the other players happy.
4. Redemption. Even when my work entails tasks that are mindless and of no discernable value, I can confer nobility on the time spent doing them through how I use the money I earn. There’s a converse that says even when I do “worthwhile” things at work, if I mindlessly squander the money I earn to do them, it diminishes the worth of the time I spent. Time is a precious commodity for living organisms.
Of course it is not hard to look at that list and pick any item apart by inserting a bad actor: a backstabbing colleague, a Dilbert-esque boss, a heartless, immoral corporation; or any number of cynical victim-centric outlooks and boogeymen. My belief is that most jobs and workplaces are benign. Obviously not all situations can be salvaged, and there are truly bad work environments, and times where getting away from a bad situation is urgent.
Humans are adept at spotting what they are looking for. Sometimes through looking for something different, we see something different.
Dave, you speak truth. I think for me number 1 is a big mistake I've dealt with in my life/career. For a long time my life was my job, and sometimes I still have moments of difficulty with this. I have a friend who's a semi-Buddhist and he's always telling me "detach, detach," and it's really true. Your job is not your life. Things are not really good or bad, just ARE. Agree with you completely and totally relate to number 1 and 2 especially.
EdithKeeler wrote:Dave, you speak truth. I think for me number 1 is a big mistake I've dealt with in my life/career. For a long time my life was my job, and sometimes I still have moments of difficulty with this. I have a friend who's a semi-Buddhist and he's always telling me "detach, detach," and it's really true. Your job is not your life. Things are not really good or bad, just ARE. Agree with you completely and totally relate to number 1 and 2 especially.
Hi Edith,
Number 1 was my first little epiphany, and number 2 is the one that has had the most far reaching impact.
2 and 4 were big in my life as well. Especially 2... most people are basically good people who want to do things I'd see as good things, but they are as overwhelmed with their lives and problems as I am with mine. I think we all tend to think "that person doesn't care about me!" but are we caring about them? Likely not. So why would they? It's hard to care about self-centered people. In both directions.
And 4 is all about control. I'm standing downstream from money that has come from Lord knows where. I can't control that, but I have a say in where it goes once it leaves my hands. And there's something satisfying that comes from taking "bad" money and turning it to "good" purposes.
#3 should also include co-workers in addition to the employer. Their interests and happiness do not usually overlap, but it seems that the coworkers' happiness with you often correlates with the employer's.
henrik wrote:#3 should also include co-workers in addition to the employer. Their interests and happiness do not usually overlap, but it seems that the coworkers' happiness with you often correlates with the employer's.
I agree, that's why in the last sentence I said "all players" meaning employer, customer, coworkers/colleagues. And you are correct, it's all for the purpose of making the employer happy so that he continues to give me money for being there. Beyond the context of employer/employee relationships, I try to make my coworkers happy, or at least avoid making them unhappy, the same way I do with all people I interact.
2015 brought me to the point where I am confident that paid work is now optional. It continues to be desirable because I still have the opportunity to build in enough additional margin to allow me to sleep better at night and weather just about anything short of complete economic collapse of the USA and western capitalism. It is good knowing I can step away or be kicked to the curb at any time with my primary goals still largely intact.
The personal side of life has been difficult with my mother's ongoing struggle with stage 4 cancer, and then learning earlier in December that the oldest of my sisters now has also been diagnosed with cancer (overall outlook still unknown). There's not a lot to say about that here. It's hard, and it lends a different perspective to priorities.
Work also has been suboptimal with a lot of disruption occurring in the area that I work which has more-or-less forced me to take a new assignment that I never would have volunteered for. I'm doing my best to spin it as an opportunity, but that is difficult for someone in the process of winding down their career. Every time I try to think of it as an opportunity I ask myself, “Opportunity for what, exactly?” and have no answer. So I'll have to revert to my old habit of just showing up and accepting the situation for what it is and, starting there, calling forth my best effort to do what it is they want me to do in exchange for the money (which is good and necessary to me still).
That all probably sounds pretty whiny but I'm not sending out save-the-dates for a pity party. Even though my work situation will be potentially the worst it's been in 25 years, it's pretty apparent that relatively speaking, I'll continue to be a happy camper. The health-related stuff is part of life, and along with the rest of my family we'll just have to weather it as best we can.
So, where does that leave me? I've certainly lost an amount of enthusiasm over the course of 2015. The year had sort of a “turning the crank” feel to it. Aside from financial gains that will be discussed in a follow-on entry once all the numbers are in, I think my biggest growth was a maturation of my sense of simplicity and growing acceptance of my limitations in terms of the “extreme” facet of ERE. I've long said I'm just ER relative to this community, but I still have a desire to do better. I realize that now, at this stage, whatever changes I make will be incremental. In some respects that is a weak attitude, but I find it difficult to convince myself to go all-in on a lifestyle that I won't enjoy. So I experiment with small changes and keep the ones I like and undo the ones I don't. I'm to the point now where there just isn't a lot of low hanging fruit for me, but slowly over time I seem to be honing in on an increasingly optimal set point for myself. As long as I can continue to see progress/improvement, I'm satisfied.
Even though I'm doing well by some standards and I could easily coast to my primary goals, I still have a desire to make some improvements.
I went back to look, and I had three “resolutions” for 2015:
1. Learn a new utilitarian skill
2. Learn a new leisure skill
3. Eliminate as much refined/factory sugar from my diet as possible.
I had completely forgotten about them so did not complete them in a deliberate sense. As far as the first two I did not do much on top of honing/relearning some older skills that had been idle for a period of years (mostly "Northwoodsy"/fishing things). The third I pretty much failed, although I probably made some incremental improvements.
In hindsight part of the problem was that I did not practice good goal setting when making the list. They weren't specific enough, the time frame was nebulous, and they (especially no. 3) were not conducive to being crisply measured.
With that in mind what I'll do for my new year's “resolutions” is give myself a deadline of 15 January to complete a written list of goals that are realistic, specific, meaningful to me, directly measurable, and each given a reasonable time limit.
In this journal I've spent a lot of words talking about mindfulness and related things. I don't feel that I did too well in that regard during 2015. Too often I got caught in the trap of worrying about the future, which tends to immerse me in a certain type of paralysis. Sometimes I'm very conscious of it, during others it's very subconscious. The latter cast a pall over probably 10x the amount of time as the former. Either way I tend to engage in avoidance behaviors, big ones being trolling around on the internet and parking in front of Netflix. I had a good list of reasons for it—my mother getting a terminal diagnosis, then my sister getting an unfavorable diagnosis, all the disruption/instability at work, my youngest adult daughter's ongoing comedy of life errors, etc. So offering excuses is easy, but at the same time those occurrences are exactly the type of things where maintaining a mindful focus would arguably pay dividends. If you look at them as a test, I did not make a high mark. In the realm of the hypothetical I guess I could make a case that I would have done much worse had I not refined and simplified my outlook in the prior years. Regardless, all I can do at this point is make the best of today, and from where my feet hit the floor tomorrow morning at the dawn of 2016, take each step one at a time and make the best of them.
So from a thematic perspective three words seem to capture what I feel I need as a backdrop for 2016: intentional, purposeful, mindful.
I do have a number of financial goals/targets that I'll talk about in the next update (maybe tomorrow) once the final 2015 numbers are in after the markets close today.
Dave, you're too hard on yourself. In a loving family, health problems are a big deal.
In 2007, G and I lost a daughter. We knew early into our pregnancy with her that she might not make it, and she didn't. The specter of death can be more punishing than the real thing. It steals your energy like nothing else to hope and fear at the same time. It makes doing normal tasks like doing them in a sea of molasses. Sometimes it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. It took concentration and muscular effort to just get through the day.
I think right now it's important to remain focused on your numbers. You're not going to feel like you're making progress when you're making it in this kind of emotional chaos. But your numbers don't lie. You're making good progress. You may not be able to concentrate on anything but your family for a while. That only means they are a greater priority to you than your personal achievement is. If that is an accurate reflection of your values, then don't let it feel like failure. Loving people well is the opposite of failure.
