DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

May has come and gone, here are the numbers:

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Monthly Savings Rate: 65.9%

YTD Savings Rate: 38.18%

Months Living Expenses: 110.5 months

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

Here are the numbers for June:

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Monthly Savings Rate: 66.0%

YTD Savings Rate: 42.8%

Months Living Expenses: 90.5 months

Half year retrospective:

It's been over 6 months since we moved to a lower cost state. And many unexpected/hidden costs have cropped up. Our average savings rates definitely have not gone up as I had expected even though our core living costs have been effectively reduced by 50%.

As far as I can tell, the monthly surplus generated from the move has all been eaten up by a combination of lifestyle inflation, unexpected housing/auto repair expenses, and bailouts to my wife's relatives. At the end of the day, we are still pretty much looking at a 50-60% annual savings rate instead of the targeted 80-85% savings rate.

Now on the one hand, the lifestyle inflation and bailouts have really improved our marriage/relationship. My DW now has all the trappings of an upper middle-class life. She also has more spending money than nearly all of her friends and female relatives. Moreover the bailouts is making my wife look good in the eyes of her family. As a result, there are very few arguments in our household about the budget.

Otoh, with such high living expenses we are looking at at least 8 years before FI, assuming no additional lifestyle inflation. The thing that really gets to me is that, I'm totally fine living without any of these bells and whistles. If we could just shrink our standard of living down to where it was back in NYC, then I could quit my high stress job within 24 months.

Being that the situation is what it is, the only way to shorten the time to FI would be to drastically increase our monthly income while keeping a lid on further lifestyle inflation. The problem is that, I'm hitting a wall in terms of further income potential. I feel that all of my productive capabilities are pretty much maxed out at this point.... :cry:

George the original one
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Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by George the original one »

I think you can only increase that income by becoming a business with employees.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

@George the original one

I feel that's the only way to go too. I have been trying to expand my software side business, but it's rough going mainly because I have so little free time left.

@cimorene12

The $1000 dollars of public transportation was because I had to take the train to NYC several times that month due to work.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

It's been 2.5 years since my last post, and there has been significant changes during this time. To summarize:

1. I am definitely no longer a debt slave.
2. My son is no longer a baby, he's a hyper-active little boy
3. We have acquired a 2nd house to live in, our first house is back to being a rental property.

I like to get back to these ERE journals because these posts keep us on track. So for the month of November, here are our stats:

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Monthly Savings Rate: 81.7%

YTD Savings Rate: 62.4%

Months Living Expenses: 176

Notes:
We are currently focused on paying off our 2nd house's mortgage. The entire mortgage is scheduled to be paid off in 5 months. I find that after a certain point, slashing expenses further disturbs the peace of my household. So overall, we have had much more success in terms of growing our income(both active and passive) rather than cutting down on expenses.

Eureka
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Jun 10, 2016 11:03 am

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by Eureka »

Welcome back!

I just read your whole journal and enjoyed the way you chronicle your journey through life. It was a good read. It also made me reflect on my own situation. I can easily live on the amount of money you get from your financial investments, but I guess I also dislike spending all my time working way more than you do.

Looking forward to following your writings.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

Wow I can't believe it's been 3 months since my last update. It's hard to remember to update this journal because things have been going pretty much on auto-pilot at my household. So here are the stats for February:

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Summary:

Monthly Savings Rate: 70.3%
YTD Savings Rate: 69.7%


It's smooth sailing so far this year. Our savings rate seems to be holding steady at around 70%. It was impossible to drive it to higher levels this month due to unexpected medical and auto-repair bills. Also the grocery and restaurant spending seems to be going aggressively upwards for my family of 3. I remember years back when we were paying off student debt that our household was able to eat well on just $200-300 dollars worth of groceries a month. I need to work with DW to figure out how to bring the the food bills back to reasonable levels. $1700 a month a food seems too high to me. I don't like to disturb the peace in my household, and my DW rightfully points out that we are still saving 70% of our income. So I just need to figure out a nuanced way to approach this with her.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

Hi all,

I can't believe it's been 9 months since the last update. Here are my household's income/expense stats for the month of November:

Income:
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Expenses:
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Summary

In terms of monthly savings rate, we are now consistently getting 70% or better. We should be able to close this year out with an average savings rate of at least 67%. 2 Significant milestones were hit in November:

1. Paid off the mortgage on our 2nd house in November.
2. Household Net worth has exceeded 1 million dollars in November.

Image

I still remember 9 years ago when our household was drowning in 192K of school debt with no savings and we became super frugal. That life seems so distant now, almost dream-like. Nevertheless, I'm still working on convincing DW to moderate her dining, groceries and personal cash expenditures. I'm fairly confident that if those rationalization steps can be put into place, we can reach a savings rate of 80% or greater.

Fish
Posts: 570
Joined: Sun Jun 12, 2016 9:09 am

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by Fish »

You might enjoy visualizing your income and expenses with a Sankey diagram. Since your income exceeds your expenses by a fair amount, using equal-sized pie charts doesn't do justice to your financial awesomeness.

http://www.getrichslowly.org/2017/12/06 ... -diagrams/

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

Hi all,

I can't believe it's been almost a year since my last post. I want to give some updates on several momentous events that have happened in the last 12 months. I'm also looking for some advice from folks who have FIRED already.

Our family has a new member
Our second child was born in April of this year. She is a sweet little baby who has thoroughly captured our hearts. I have started a 529 for her and plan to build it up in the same way that my son's 529 has been built up. My daughter is not only a good baby with predictable eating and sleeping patterns, she has also been pretty low-cost. There was a small bump in terms of grocery bills to account for my wife eating extra to feed our daughter. We re-used most of my son's baby supplies (crib, carrier, stroller, clothes...etc), and donations from relatives made up most of the rest. Due to some high risk pregnancy concerns, my wife had stopped working since January of this year and has been looking after the baby this whole time. So we haven't had much of any child care costs. The only real spike in baby cost so far seems to be in monthly health insurance costs. Now that DW is ready to get back into the workforce, I am expecting childcare costs to sky rocket in 2019.

Minimum FI threshold reached
In November of this year, our total household net worth reached 1.2 million. Deducting the amount for our primary residency, and applying the 4% rule, results in approximately 36K/year of dependable investment income. This is an important milestone for me since it marks the point in which all necessary expenses (e.g property taxes, healthcare, food, transportation, utilities, 529 contributions) for our household can be met with investment income. Now our real annual spending is double this number, but nearly all discretionary spending is for luxury goods/services (e.g fancy new clothes, expensive vacations, organic groceries, spending money, gifts/bailouts, eating out 2-3 times a week at sit down restaurants).

Tested an 8 week early retirement trial
When my daughter was born, I negotiated an extended 8 week Leave of absence with my employer. I wanted to help out DW with the newborn but I also wanted to try out FIRE to see if there would be unexpected scenarios. Now for the last 15 years, this is the longest single of period of time that I had off from work. The experience was quite eye opening and I learned many things:

1. My day job takes a tremendous toll on me on physiologically and mentally, but I didn't even realize just how much it took out of me until I had an extended period of time away from it. After about 3 weeks of not working, I went to the doctor of get a physical and the doctor mentioned that my blood pressure was lower than my last checkup. Now my blood pressure had been trending upwards every year for the last 5 years. Over the 8 weeks, I managed to workout once a day, 7 days a week, and I lost around 15 pounds. But it wasn't only the exercise. I also had full control over my food supply, being able to cook most of my own meals in a relaxed way allowed me to make better, healthier food with less meat and way more green vegetables. It made me feel much calmer and clear headed. Getting 8 hours of sleep every night was a game changer, the level of energy and focus that a well rested body can deliver is amazing.

2. When I'm not working(and everyone else is), my neighborhood becomes almost like an alternate universe. Everything that would normally be congested, broken down, angry/dysfunctional becomes almost Utopian. The local roads seems to be built just for me. The bus service runs perfectly on time (to the minute). The bicycle lane actually functions for bicycles. The local state park becomes like a private resort just for me. There are no lines in stores and supermarkets. And the library has tons of free and cool things to do.

3. When there is no structure and no pressure, I waste a lot of time. I created ambitious lists of things that I wanted to do prior to the leave. But by the end of the leave, I had done less than 20% of it. I think there is something with my mentality that needs structure to function efficiently. There were many days were I basically didn't do much of anything. And the day goes by quickly and very pleasantly, but afterwards there is this distinct sense of a lack of something. By the end of the leave I was resorting to writing down simple tasks at the beginning of every day and then checking them off to convince myself that I had done useful stuff during the day. It's a pretty frustrating feeling because I set milestones for myself but when there is no pressure there is nothing that motivates me to achieve those milestones. This was not expected and I don't really like this feeling.

4. As part of my day job, I advise C-Suite executives of Fortune 500 companies on key technology decisions. When operating at this level, there is a certain strategic aspect to the management of conversations, relationships with key leaders, and the balancing of often times competing organizations/factions within clients. When in the thick of it, I intensely dislike this aspect of my job. It often feels as if I'm contorting logic, reason, and common sense to achieve short-term machiavellian goals. But during the leave, it was as if that portion of my brain that was constantly running at 150% was abruptly idled. I found myself missing this kind of strategic thinking and I started playing online strategy games to capture that feeling of success and control. But then it is like #3, after hours of gaming I achieved exactly....NOTHING. In my day job, the same type of thinking produced revenue , but it also changed the physical world and the structure and composition of people within entire companies(for good or ill). This was also unexpected and rather disturbing to me. My mind apparently need to do activities that I find disagreeable to do in my day job.



I need some advice and perspective from people who FIREd

As this year is drawing to a close, I've been thinking a lot about FI and where I want my family to be 3 to 4 years from now. My day job is becoming increasingly unbearable to me. But at the same time this stressful, hateful job seems to gives me certain elements of pleasure, it's almost like a perverse form of masochism. From a hard numbers perspective, we are approximately 3.5 years away from being able to cover 100% of our current luxurious spending levels, so if I grit my way through it, me and DW can FATFIRE.

So here is my first question, should I LEANFIRE or FATFIRE? or somewhere in between?

Now the other tricky aspect of this entire thing is my need for structure and pressure to get anything done. I feel like if I did FIRE, there is a high probability that I'm going to waste away years being a lazy, unproductive person and would not be setting a good example for my children. So I'm exploring a few ideas to prevent this entropy from happening:

Becoming a CIO or CTO of a small non-profit and use the goal of trying to save the world to motivate me to do work
Somehow getting myself into a chillaxed startup and get the other members of the startup to motivate me to do work
Re-creating several online income streams (as I had many years ago) and get those streams to force me to do work

So here is my second question, do any of the above tactics actually work for those who have already FIRED? Or are there other better ideas out there?


Thanks for any advice and tips!

classical_Liberal
Posts: 2283
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Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

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Last edited by classical_Liberal on Fri Feb 05, 2021 1:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

2Birds1Stone
Posts: 1596
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2015 11:20 am
Location: Earth

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Congratulations on your baseline FI! That's an amazing feeling for sure!

My IRS dispute was resolved over the weekend, any luck with yours?

I would find a middle ground between lean-FIRE and fat-FIRE, maybe figure out your next phase of life while getting a portion of those luxuries covered?

Also, can you use some geoarbitrage to get $36k/yr to cover more of your core expenses + some luxuries? This is a topic that's near and dear to me right now, as I've crossed over 25X base expenses late this summer, and I'm fast approaching 25X current (albeit not a number I want to have to live on forever) expenses.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

@classical_Liberal
I agree that 8 weeks might not be enough to find out. I'm planning a longer sabbatical at some point, perhaps around 3-4 months. I'm not sure if a LEANFIRE scenario will motivate me to apply myself since I seem to be very minimalist by nature. I think I would be pretty content with spending very little money, since that is what I do now and have been doing for almost 10 years now. Most of the luxury spending in our household is initiated by DW.

@2Birds1Stone
Thanks for the reply. I'm also thinking of something in between LEANFIRE and FATFIRE, maybe push hard for another 2 years and calling it good. I have implemented geo-arbitrage already by moving out of NYC. I was not able to realize much monthly savings but rather we realized a significant bump in standard of living while spending the same amount of money. One thing to note on luxuries, imho we are living it up right now on 6k/month. Our base line expenses are low and that extra $3000 a month goes a long way towards shopping, dining, vacations.....etc. I can't move any further away because it would make my family and DW's family way too distant for regular visits.

@cimorene12
Yeah, I'm starting to think that I would never retire in the sense of not working. My mental condition would go haywire if I stopped doing productive things. However, I'm starting to think of FIRE as obtaining the ability and freedom to pursue work that I can be passionate about and leaving the work that I don't feel good doing. Finding that passion is the tricky thing for me. Most of my work motivation so far been based on fear, financial insecurity, and social pressure.

prognastat
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Location: Texas
Contact:

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by prognastat »

I can tell you from having 2 month summer vacations growing up that I didn't feel like being productive until the very end of them.

latearlyFI
Posts: 40
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:24 am

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by latearlyFI »

I just read this whole thread in one go. What an amount of growth! So inspirational! Thanks for sharing. FWIW you're so nice helping your In-laws and giving your wife spending $. I sure wouldn't be so generous, not until I was fully independent. Congrats on all your success. I'm motivated even more to save more.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

Another year has passed and it's time for an update.

November was a good month in terms of wealth production. We saw massive gains in existing financial investments.

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Expenses this month were also on the higher side due to quarterly property taxes for both properties, an unexpectedly high medical bill, and across the board spending increases due to Thanksgiving & Xmas.

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Monthly Savings Rate: 77.8%
12 Month Savings Rate: 62.0%


Year end review

Making solid progress on FATFIRE Goals
Our household net worth has now reached 1.4 million. At current savings rates, we are approximately 35 months away from reaching FAT FIRE target levels.

Taking care of the kids is the most expensive thing ever!!!!
I'm spending over $2000 a month on childcare for my 2 kids. It's basically 85% day care/baby sitter and 15% after-school care, and it's an outrageous amount of money. The silver lining here is that my daughter is turning 2 years old soon and from that point onward, daycare will get incrementally less expensive every 6 months. But even more than the money, there is a massive and growing time commitment. I'm spending increasing amounts of time every day with my son and making sure that he is doing well in school. I expect equal amounts of time would be needed with my daughter when she gets a bit older. I'm not complaining about this because I love spending time with my boy and girl but it's hard to squeeze out the time to do so.

Learning the subtle art of not giving a f**k at work
I'm slowly learning this skill. As overall household net worth levels grow, the level of seriousness that I assign to my job is decreasing. Basically I'm starting to let busy work activities that are not important slide at work. Also certain situations and office politics that in earlier years would cause me great stress now seems to have less and less of an effect on me. Now I was half expecting some sort of a reprimand for this but instead I got another promotion in my organization a couple of months ago with a nice pay raise. At this point I'm really close to C-Suite. If I manage to break into the C-Suite in the next 3 years, it would be a great way to retire with a bang from my current company.

Our lifestyle inflation seems to have peaked
In past years, DW and I have developed a system where she would keep the growth of our household's luxury spending contained at a rate that is exceeded by my efforts at growing our household's net worth. This system has worked reasonably well over the last decade, allowing a 60-65% annual household savings rate while keeping everybody happy. However over the last year, I noticed that the luxury spending by DW has apparently leveled off and even dropped somewhat. Now I care about my wife's well being, so I dug a little bit into it and realized that she is spending less because she thinks that her 2 sisters, 3 close female cousins, and several of her closest friends were struggling to match her level of lifestyle spending. So DW felt bad and didn't want to show off. This is a big surprise for me because I was expecting continuing modest increases in luxury spending and made it part of my long term FATFIRE planning. It appears that my wife's spending may have significantly exceeded the maximum spending levels of her female peers this year and now social pressures is convincing her to reduce that spending. Now I have a rough idea of the financial situations of these women and their husbands/boyfriends. None of them seems to be aware of FI as a concept. All but 1 have normal jobs making normal salaries. The one husband with a high income job also seems to be a big spender (e.g a huge McMansion on Mortgage, 4 cars, multiple international vacations a year, unpaid school debts).

Making lots of progress in Physical fitness
Over the last year both DW and I have been upping our workout levels. At this point, she's working out twice a week, and I'm doing it 4 times a week. We both lost many pounds of flab. We got a room on the 2nd floor set up as a mini gym. I cannot stress enough the joys of good physical health. I wish somebody had pointed a gun to my head and forced me to work out and eat right years ago.

Hristo Botev
Posts: 1731
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:42 am

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by Hristo Botev »

Just read through your journal and wow, very inspiring!
DebtSlaveNoMore wrote:
Sun Dec 01, 2019 11:57 pm
Taking care of the kids is the most expensive thing ever!!!!
Don't I know it! I'm constantly amazed at how expensive we as a society have made raising children. When my kids were babies/toddlers I thought the high costs I kept hearing about were really just a problem for the bulldozer and helicopter-type parents (of which I'm sure I share at least a couple characteristics). But honestly, I think the landscape of raising children really has changed drastically. This isn't necessarily a political endorsement, but I thought the book Elizabeth Warren and her daughter published 15 years ago, The Two-Income Trap (when E. Warren was a little less progressive), was just spot on. We as parents have just done a really good job at making things increasingly difficult for ourselves from a money and time perspective.

Hristo Botev
Posts: 1731
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:42 am

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by Hristo Botev »

DebtSlaveNoMore wrote:
Sun Dec 01, 2019 11:57 pm
The silver lining here is that my daughter is turning 2 years old soon and from that point onward, daycare will get incrementally less expensive every 6 months.
FWIW, I've found that as my kids have aged out of daycare/aftercare, they age into sports leagues and other extracurriculars (community theater, music, etc.), the costs of which add up. We've definitely tried not to overdo it with those types of activities, and to give the kids plenty of time to play on their own and to have to entertain themselves without adults hovering over them; but I don't know how you just avoid these activities completely.

DebtSlaveNoMore
Posts: 57
Joined: Sat Feb 02, 2013 7:27 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by DebtSlaveNoMore »

I can't believe another year has gone by. Here is an update on our journey, November was a fantastic month in terms of income and investment appreciation.

November Income:
Image

For this month (and most of this year) our expenses have been lower than usual. We are still practicing a high degree of social distancing due to Covid19. So vacations, eating out at restaurants, and many other services have essentially been curtailed for the time being.

November Expenses:
Image

Monthly Savings Rate: 89.0%
YTD Savings Rate: 75.6%


Year end review

This year has seen faster than expected gains towards the FATFIRE Goals that I had set 2 years ago. COVID19 has led to crazy stock market growth in the US, as well as artificially increased savings rate for our family due to suppressed consumption. Because of these factors, our household net worth has now reached 1.7 million.

At the current rate of wealth accumulation, we are approximately 18 months away from reaching the FAT FIRE target levels that I had envisioned in 2018. As I'm closing in on the FIRE end game, I've been troubled by a couple of things:

Suffering Corporate Survivor's guilt along with massive, MASSIVE Golden Handcuffs
My job has become the most unbearable chore ever. It seems like the more wealth I get, the less I'm able to tolerate the nonsense at work. Sometimes, even my pretense of that workplace motivation is starting to crack. Most of the work that I'm doing nowadays can't even qualify as useful management or technology strategy. I am literally a sham of a technology executive. My company has been doing round after round of mass layoffs for the last 9 months, and yet so far, I have been untouched. I feel like I'm just pure overhead at this point, a slice of fat that could be trimmed without any major loss to the organization. So what does my employer do? They decided to give me a massive 150K bonus in company stock option. This option will be vested in 2 increments, the first in Feb 2021 and the second in Feb 2022. So I'm miserable at my current workplace, but if I just stay put for 14 months, the financial reward is quite significant.


Still have no idea what I want to do post FIRE
So this is turning out to be a huge conundrum for me. What am I supposed to do once I reach FATFIRE? I feel like I'm desperately running away from a hard and stressful job, but I don't really know what I'm running towards. I have this very driven, type A personality and I fear for my own sanity and mental stability if there wasn't some kind of structure in my life. I've considered several different options including:

1. Going all in on developing online Passive Income streams?
This path will utilize some of my rusty technology skills and I've seen significant past success with developing an online app side business. However, that was nearly 10 years ago, so I feel like an old dog in a world of sharp young developers.

2. Becoming a social Influencer?
This is the standard blog/youtube/instagram path of creating useful engaging content, amassing subscribers, and getting ad revenue. I have been cultivating a bit of a hobby in terms of both photography and film making. However, it seems like it would be quite difficult to earn significant income in this area. And from a little experiment that I conducted in growing a youtube channel from 0 to ~20K subscribers, it feels very much like low level marketing work.

3. Joining a non-profit as a tech executive?
I've heard mixed reviews of working at non-profits from colleagues within my professional network. Some say it's great work life balance and a lot of freedom and others say that it's slow and suffocating. I want to do something that would give me structure and purpose but I don't really want a even worse version of what I already have with my current job except with lower pay and social status.

In conclusion
I would love to get some feedback from those of you who have already FIREd on the points above. What path did you take? Did you have any issues with defining purpose and structure in your post RE life? Did you end up going back to work out of sheer boredom?

Andy Dufresne
Posts: 36
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2015 3:03 pm

Re: DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

Post by Andy Dufresne »

DSNM, I have enjoyed reading your journal over the years, and understand the hectic/maddening lifestyle you describe all too well.

While I did not FIRE in the traditional sense of the word, I am FI and have been living without working for the past several years. Here are some things I want you to keep in mind:

1. Its OK o FIRE without knowing what you will do later. The whole idea is that you don't have the financial pressure, so use it to spend some time recuperating, losing weight, getting in shape, sleeping well, travelling - then you will be in a much much better place - physically and emotionally - to make any long term decision/s.

2. Its OK to take time to figure out what you want to do, because while you are figuring it out, you have the priceless opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad and really connect with your kids. They grow up so quickly, but an investment in them is the best investment you can make. Even if it takes you years to decide, or you decide simply to do nothing except tend to your veggie garden, being a kick-ass dad is a very time and energy consuming affair.

3. While I don't work, I do several things to keep sharp and in touch:
(a) I invest - with your knowledge, the payoff from tending to your investments may provide the highest ROI without ever leaving your study!
(b) I serve as an informal mentor to a few younger people and a sounding board to ex-colleagues and friends still working.
(c) Should something super interesting come along, I have the option of hopping on board at a moment's notice - optionality is very valuable. So I do keep up with the world.

4. As you will likely only FIRE in March 2022 (assuming you stick around with the Golden Handcuffs and don't get the One More Year syndrome), take the time you have to maximize your health - you'll be nearing 40 then, and that's the age or illusions of eternal youth face the tough reality of paying for the stress of bygone years.

5. Discuss things with DW, including the timing of FIRE-ing. As you approach the date, talk to your kids. If you are suddenly home, the balance shifts and it will take time for all to adjust.

6. Once the date is set, make a plan on how to minimize work and work related stress so that you glide towards the date and exit without burning any major bridges. You will know what to do. Also, this means refusing promotions/etc.

However, one tactic you may find useful as you are already getting options, is to get a competing offer with a very substantial option component only for the sake of having your current place match and raise, specifically providing you with more options that vest in 2021 and 2022 (if that's your FIRE date). You can also switch of course and ask for a huge bonus, mass amount of options that vest quickly ... should you succeed, the difference to your NW can be huge. This, of course, is a one-off, but in a sense its a capitalization of your current standing for all the years of hard work, so do it - its rational, the ROI is immense (yes, you will have to interview etc. but still, you only need one good offer and the market is now very hot) and IMHO can add another 10% (if not more) to your NW. While this doesn't seem like much, over the next 40-50 years it can mean a huge legacy for your grandkids and beyond.

7. Final year of work optimization - you may wish to work until Easter or a bit longer to maximize future Social Security (i.e. working an additional quarter with very high pay) and FIRE-year 401K contributions.

Hope this helps .. happy to continue this here or via PM.

Andy

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