Apologies if you read my intro post, some of this will be repetitive!
Current affairs
- Late 30s, married, employed as a software engineer. Job is really hard to complain about, as far as jobs go
- Currently WL4-ish, looking to improve my general handiness and solve more problems in-house.
- Living in a house we bought ~1 year ago in the suburbs. This was a mistake. We do not like the suburbs, and would like to sell the house and return to the city
- Have about $900k in assets (including the equity in the house, which is only ~$100k of that)
- Aside from housing, we spend about ~$25k/year combined. Our mortgage payment is nearly $3,000/month. So housing absolutely dominates our spending. I'd like to bring this down significantly.
- Housing We're going to look at an apartment in the city later today. The rent on this unit is 60% what our mortgage payment is, so it would be a pretty lovely change of pace. Plus the reduced maintenance, utilities, and car-dependency would be really nice. We have a close friend who lives in the same building, too, which is a big draw.
Neither my wife nor I are entirely sure what kind of housing situation we really want. Part of me hates going back to renting. But I'm feeling a little trigger shy after making such a goof with our home purchase last year.
We had our roof replaced soon after moving into our house, and decided to have a skylight removed because of condensation issues. What remains is a hole in the ceiling with a beautiful plywood view. To start getting the place ready to sell, I'll be putting my limited drywalling skills to good use this weekend, and closing that bad-boy up.
- Cycling/fitness. Since covid, I've turned into a bit of a hermit, and been way too sedentary. Moving to the 'burbs has only made this worse. I have used my bike as transportation exactly 0 times since moving here. I'm trying to get back into some semblance of "in shape". I'm focusing on primarily zone-2 cardio training now, and have been doing ~90 minute indoor bike rides on my trainer. A relatively pathetic 90w is my current zone-2 sweet spot. Hoping to see this go up over the coming months.
- Work. I'm getting close to my FI number. And if we can bring our housing costs down a bit, we'll be ready to rock. I'm having a tad of the "One More Year" mindset. I know I could figure out a way to scrape some money together in the future if I needed it. But I'm having a hard time actually believing it's a wise idea to give up my relatively easy money-fountain. Sitting at a computer desk most of the day is not exactly a healthy way to spend my time, and I certainly wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the paycheck—there's very little passion here.