2 Years ago I was given the opportunity to work for a company without an office in my country of origin (Holland). At that moment I started to realize that I could build wealth by choosing a country with a friendlier tax system. So this started 2 years ago.. and I have been working on it since. I keep costs low (we live of max 25% of my income) and the rest is saved.
Your Money or Your Life was my first contact with financial independence and ERE made it even more concrete. So a few months ago I wanted to make the end date very concrete and decided that 2020 would be a nice date (I'll be 45 in 2020) so I came up with the 84 months plan. The funny thing is, that if I would have stayed in Holland, 2020 would also be the year that my college loan would have been payed back. Luckily I payed off that debt last year in 1 go.
For me the biggest reason to work towards financial independence is freedom. Freedom of not needing to work; although I probably keep working since I like doing it and I would like to see my capital growing. But I'm not forced to take on brainless assignments. Also having the time to rediscover myself.. finding other hobbies than my current computer/reading related ones. I would love to do stuff with wood/metal. I would also love to be more self sustaining; so grow my own feed.. chop my own wood... reducing the needs to rely on the grid... perhaps some solar panels... somewhere in the mountains/forests for Bulgaria. But this is far away stuff.. and I don't know how happy my girl would be with this
Sclass: Such a great story. I can literally visualize it.
jacob: Did you seriously spend less than $100 on non-food items over an entire year? An ~8 dollar monthly "fun" budget is something to aspire to, for sure. Doing it for one month is easy enough. But for an entire year? Now that's a challenge!
My own catalyst for ERE/FI is probably a mishmash of different factors: aversion to debt, low-impact living, avoiding the humiliation associated with age discrimination in the workplace, alternative lifestyle design, and probably other stuff that escapes me at the moment.
jacob: Did you seriously spend less than $100 on non-food items over an entire year? An ~8 dollar monthly "fun" budget is something to aspire to, for sure. Doing it for one month is easy enough. But for an entire year? Now that's a challenge!
This was BNY before BNY became a thing and waaay before the concept got watered down to near meaningless. If you look back to the 2000s, the idea of buying absolutely nothing beyond essentials for a year was the bar to meet. You could say I actually failed the standard.
I've always been frugal and happy to do things differently. ERE is naturally my thing. It's a shame it took me so long to properly discover it. For years, I've had so many pieces of the puzzle! I was just clumsy about fitting them together until I properly read the book a bit over a year ago, and things snapped into place.
I'm slowly getting my wife on board. Not easy. Reading the book is a few bridges too far for her. She doesn't feel comfortable around the mathematical/financial side of ERE. Never mind she's university educated and a financial officer in her job. I can't convince her with facts. She needs a warm fuzzy feeling of trust or something to navigate on, so I try to give her that. I do ERE cooking experiments and see what sticks with her. We enjoy the surprises of food waste apps together. We stopped our use of car sharing almost entirely. Etcetera.
I do also try to feed her small teaspoons of ERE math and finances here and there. TikTok style slogans sometimes. "400€ in the bank is a euro a month for the rest of our lives.", "Does that expense show who we are?", "Does that expense show who we want to be?". "Opportunity cost" is extremely difficult to TikTokise. I'm quite hopeful us moving out of our current home and selling it/rent it out will be the ERE catalyst for her.
