DebtSlaveNoMore's Journal

[DebtSlaveNoMore]

Andy Dufresne thanks so much for your well considered reply! I really need to think through some of these items, especially your advice in regards to health and a transition plan towards the exit date!

[DebtSlaveNoMore]

I can't believe that another year has gone by! Here is an update on our journey.

November was a fantastic month in terms of income and investment appreciation. Like most months now, our investment growth has outpaced our income.

November Income:



Our expenses have remained suppressed for much of 2021 due to the lingering effects of Covid. However I've noticed that it's recently starting to creep back up. Principally this is reflected in child care costs, our youngest is back in daycare and prices have gone up by about 20%. Inflation has also taken it's tool in terms of groceries and amazon purchases, it feels like these 2 categories have gone up in price by at least 30%. For this month, we also had a number of medical visits and procedures that we had put off in 2020.

November Expenses:


Monthly Savings Rate: 86.4%
12 Month Savings Rate: 86.8%


Year End Review:

In 2021, we have seen absolutely stunning gains towards the FATFIRE Networth goal that I had set 3 years ago. There are 4 key factors in this growth:

1. Crazy gains in the S&P 500
2. Crazy gains in real estate properties
3. Vesting of part 1 of my RSUs of 75K from work which I converted immediately into VTSAX (RSU part 2 will vest in February 2022)
4. Forced increase in household savings rate due to Covid

So with the above factors, our household NW has climbed above 2.2 million. At current rates of wealth accumulation, we're less than 6 months away from reaching my FATFIRE target from 2018.


Post FI Cutover Considerations:

As I close on this target, I'm starting to develop a post FI plan of action. My bottom line assumption is that I do not want to stop working altogether after hitting the target. I feel that I'm not well suited to having zero work responsibilities in my life. So instead, I'm preparing to transition into a long term COASTFIRE situation where I work 20 hours per week(remotely) and earn at least 80K per year. I would prefer in this scenario to have no management oversight and no corporate governing structure. Right now DW has already semi-retired, she is working just 1 day a week and earning around 20K per year. In this plan, we would bring in a combined 100K per year which is quite a bit more than what our family spends and COAST into the sunset on top of our FAT stash!

To achieve this outcome, I've begun the following activities:

1. I've started a freelance consultancy on the side where I provide industry specific SME advice and strategy for Fortune 500 clients. I'm currently doing 1-2 hourly consultations a month and charging $400/hour. I'm using my current professional network to grow my client base. My plan is to scale this business up to 10-15 consultations a month by 2023.

2. I've created a small Youtube channel with a following of around 25k subscribers in my particular industrial vertical. Right now it's bringing in approximately $100/month via Youtube ads. I believe I can 10X this revenue within 1 year via producing more content as well as leveraging sponsors.

3. I've been building a homelab in my office and learning to build modern cloud native SAAS products. I haven't been doing hands on development for several years now so this is a bit of a learning journey (e.g mastering Kubernetes, Python, and React is harder than I expected). My goal is to develop at least 1 SAAS subscription product and monetize the heck out of it within the next 12 months.

4. While the above items are being executed, I'm still working as a tech executive at my current company. Truth be told, my career has stagnated over the last year. I still fulfill my responsibilities, but I just have no drive to go above and beyond. And I'm frankly sick of participating in corporate political games. Maybe I'm jaded, but the "strategic" goals of my employer seems entirely pointless, if not outright destructive to humanity. The mass layoffs at work have stopped since April due to a tidal wave of employee resignations. Now my company is going out of it's way to stop current employees from leaving. Everyone is allowed to WFH for the foreseeable future and many of my co-workers have gotten promotions. Even with my completely average work performance this year, I was awarded a 25K EOY bonus and a 3rd RSU worth 70K that would vest in early 2023. So at this point, I'm seriously considering just giving the bare minimum effort at work (e.g like in office space post hypnosis) and just sticking around to pick up my 2 remaining RSUs (~145K) and however many paychecks they would give me. Perhaps I can even engineer my own layoff in early 2023 and get a sizeable severance as a parting gift from this place.


Other interesting life happenings:

As mentioned earlier, my DW decided to semi-retire in early 2021. She scaled down her full time job(helping disabled children) to just 1 day a week and is now pursuing her hobby as an artist the other 4 days. Quite frankly, I'm jealous of DW having so much free time and hope to join her in part time work very soon! Her relaxed lifestyle has also caught the attention of her female relatives. DW's sister and cousin have both decided to quit their full time jobs recently. Their husbands are obviously sweating bullets due to the financial strain of losing their spouse's income.

My eldest child turned 10. He is a clever boy and got into his elementary school's gifted and talented program. So this year I've begun teaching him personal finance. He now understands basic concepts like the difference between assets and liabilities, investments and speculation, stocks and bonds. I also taught him how compound interest works and opened up up a custodial brokerage account for him. Recently, my son decided(on his own initiative) to use most of his piggy bank money to buy into a total market index fund.

Somehow a rumor has spread throughout my extended family that I'm planning to retire next year. And I've been asked by multiple people about this and I've been telling everyone that this is all nonsense and that I will continue to work indefinitely. There is simply no need to attract unwanted attention.

In Conclusion:

It's been a great year and we're on track to meet the FI Goals that we had envisioned more than a decade ago. These are truly exciting times!!!!

[DebtSlaveNoMore]

Hey all, another year has come and gone. Here is an update on our journey.

December Income:


December was the last of 3 hectic months starting in October, when my Mother-in-law unexpectedly passed away. It was a tremendously sad and sobering event for our family because my wife and son were particularly close with my MIL. It also significantly increased our expenses for the last couple of months in terms of a number of funeral related costs. Occurring at roughly the same time(and more annoying than anything else) is the fact that our tenant moved out and the rental property had to have some costly repairs done. And on top of that we had a few significant car repairs to make.

December Expenses:


Monthly Savings Rate: 84.7%
12 Month Savings Rate: 64.0%

Year End Review:

In 2022, we have really more or less hit the FATFIRE Networth goal that I had set 4 years ago. Several factors contributed to this:

1. Vesting of part 2 of my RSUs of 75K from work which I converted immediately into VOO
2. Continued high household savings rate (though significantly reduced from the COVID lockdown years)
3. Reasonably strong gains in real estate prices up until a few months ago.
4. Initial Inheritance of 46K from MIL (with potentially much more on the way)

So with the above factors, our household NW has climbed above 2.5 million, which under our normal spending profile means we're in solid FIRE territory.

Near term financial prospects and milestones:
There are a few major disbursements of money and events that appears to be heading our way in the next six months.

1. Our MIL did not have significant assets in terms of saving or financial holdings. However she did have an old fully paid off house in the Greater NYC metro zone. And the sale of this property when split between my wife and her sisters should yield approximately 400K.

2. Round 3 of RSUs from my day job that is worth 70K that would vest in April 2023.

3. My 2nd child is aging out of daycare and going to Kindergarten this year. This will immediately reduce our monthly costs by $1200.

OMY Syndrome is hitting me hard:

So I had planned to quit my stressful corporate tech executive job this past summer. However the deadline came and went and I just couldn't do it. I found myself making one stupid rationalization after another literally every couple of weeks of why it's better to work at this job for just another month and another and another. And this process has been dragging on for the last 6 months. Logically, I know I can walk out of this sh*tshow job at any time and pursue a better way of life. But emotionally, I can't seem to wrap my head around the new paradigm. When I look online for part time work, what turns me off is the low pay and lack of prestige. When I look into startups, the prospect of a ton of work and grinding with a 20-something crowd just turns me off. Most of the goals that I set for myself last year to create something that I can retire into just didn't really pan out. And it is because I didn't put any significant time or focus into it. When I talk to my parents about my conundrum, I get this lecture about how I need to just man up and deal with my responsibilities(aka continue working this crushing job). It's as if my parents just can't wrap their minds around how anyone can walk away from a WFH job that makes a ton of money. And me wanting to do so is somehow a sign of failure and weakness on my part. It's as if I'm stuck in this stagnant auto-pilot mode in my life sucking on that sweet sweet Fortune 50 corporate teat. At this time, I don't really know what's wrong with me. I keep working this soul sucking job that pays a lot of money and while I dislike it intensely, my fear(or perhaps laziness) of the unknown future is preventing me from taking the next step and actually doing something with the FI that I have achieved.

Has anyone else out there been in this weird situation? What was your solution, how did you pull yourself out of this inertia?

[ertyu]

Honestly, given your income and net worth, I'd take this to a therapist. The things you need to sort out to make the move are psychological and emotional.

One aspect is the need for prestige and what it would mean if you couldn't derive prestige in the socially acceptable way anymore. Who are you without this job, and where is your worth then?

One aspect is your parents and how much of their approval and counsel you still need. How else could you deal with this if you didn't take it to your parents? What it would mean if it turns out they want you to be as rich as possible in order to rely on your finances, and no sticks on your back are too many? Or, if they are wealthy themselves, what would it mean if quitting means they really *would* see you as a failed man who can't nut up and meet his responsibilities properly? Are you ready to face being seen by your parents that way?

You mention "fear of the unknown future" - you might need to dig into this, too: what is it exactly about the unknown-ness of the future that's making you keep yourself stuck where you are? Because it's you keeping yourself stuck, and if you're doing it, deep down, psychologically, you have a good enough reason.

You don't need to be crazy or have a mental illness to use a therapist as a sounding board, in their capacity of "person who is trained to ask people the questions that would be helpful for them to answer." Therapists call people like this "the worried well." "The worried well" are always welcome clients because they can pay and they don't bring in horrorshow trauma -- which allows the therapist to take on someone who will maybe need a sliding scale and who does have such trauma. By going to therapy you will help both yourself and potentially someone else. Also, by sorting out these issues, you will become the sort of parent who can give his own children more meaningful counsel than, "man up."

[Smashter]

I enjoyed that update. Sorry about your Mother in Law.

At this time, I don't really know what's wrong with me. I keep working this soul sucking job that pays a lot of money and while I dislike it intensely, my fear(or perhaps laziness) of the unknown future is preventing me from taking the next step and actually doing something with the FI that I have achieved. Has anyone else out there been in this weird situation?

There is a contingent of forumites having a similar discussion in WRC's journal..

I count myself amongst the crowd that has a great job but is still ready to move on to more interesting ventures, though I am not FI.

Not that this is a comfort to you, but it's helpful for me to see someone with 6x my NW battling these issues. It proves this is a complicated topic worth addressing, and that it can happen to anyone. It's hard to turn off the money spigot!

I look forward to following along and seeing what solutions you come up with.

[Western Red Cedar]

So I had planned to quit my stressful corporate tech executive job this past summer. However the deadline came and went and I just couldn't do it. I found myself making one stupid rationalization after another literally every couple of weeks of why it's better to work at this job for just another month and another and another. And this process has been dragging on for the last 6 months. Logically, I know I can walk out of this sh*tshow job at any time and pursue a better way of life. But emotionally, I can't seem to wrap my head around the new paradigm. When I look online for part time work, what turns me off is the low pay and lack of prestige. When I look into startups, the prospect of a ton of work and grinding with a 20-something crowd just turns me off. Most of the goals that I set for myself last year to create something that I can retire into just didn't really pan out. And it is because I didn't put any significant time or focus into it.

Has anyone else out there been in this weird situation? What was your solution, how did you pull yourself out of this inertia?

First off, congratulations on the financial success. I took some time to read your journal while I was at the gym today and you've made incredible progress. My primary suggestion is to think about your next stage as an experiment, rather than a finite decision. When you talk to others (and yourself) frame it as a sabbatical rather than early retirement. If you like how things feel, the sabbatical can shift towards more time away from a traditional career. If you aren't happy with how things play out, you can always go back to work or find some other commitments that call to you. You could also consider downshifting at your current role, or transition somewhere that offers a better work-life balance and aligns with your values rather than just pulling the plug.

It sounds like you responded well in the past when you took some extended leave, but that you also struggle with feeling productive without some strong external motivator. I can relate to that dynamic. Although your job offers high pay and prestige, it also sounds like it is coming at a cost to your health. Keep that in mind when you make your decision.

One simple exercise recommended by Nords is to make a long list of everything you'd be interested in doing or exploring if you had more time. I crafted mine over the course of several months. It doesn't need to be realistic, but can serve as a source of inspiration after you leave work. I noticed most of the projects you've listed upthread focus on income generation. When you develop your list (or revisit your existing list) try to be a bit more creative and tap into some of the ideas and dreams you had when you were younger.

You can also check out the MMM or Bogleheads forums, as I suspect you may find a larger audience of high-income earners there who have reached FI, but are struggling to pull the trigger. I know I've seen multiple threads over the years about this topic on the MMM forums. You could check out Two Sides of FI on YouTube, as they are in the chubby/FatFire category but speak a lot about psychological issues of accumulating and unplugging. Their interview with Fritz Gilbert at the retirement manifesto is great for hearing from a couple of people on the other side of the FI line - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0WVYePTheI

@Scott2 or @iDave may have some insights as members who have recently FIREd from relatively prestigious positions.

[DebtSlaveNoMore]

@ertyu Thanks for the ideas Ertyu. I do think what I'm trying to figure out might be a series of deep seated issues that requires talking through with someone.

@Smashter, thanks for the reply. Yes it's a confusing and frustrating state to be in.

@Western Red Cedar, thanks for the advice, I'm going to check out some of the resources that you shared!

[MBBboy]

It's a fairly common topic over on the Bogleheads forums, and an issue I know I'll dealing with myself in the next couple of years.

Best advice I've gleaned from over there and with my own reflection mirrors WRCs - you don't have to figure out "forever" before you make a move. You're creating an artificially high hurdle to quitting. I went through the same problem with estate planning, where you try and make a perfect plan that's going to last the rest of your life, but there's so many variables......so you get stuck in analysis and never do anything.

Instead, estate planning should be handled in 5 year chunks. So do the same here and decide that you aren't retiring, but are doing an actual sabbatical. Pick a goal for that sabbatical (income producing if you want), but signal to your company, colleagues, and peers that you're taking some time away in order to try something cool / different. Be a college lecturer. Start a blog. Be an advisory board member to a start-up (or collection of them) - for free / little stake. Write (and self publish) a book. Do an ironman. There's any number of discrete, short term goals you can set and achieve during a 1-2 year sabbatical. What's important is that you short circuit your current state and make a change.

From there figure out if you're really "retired" - or if you want to go back to your company (or a similar one) after a perfectly respectable (and easily explained) professional break. Part of what makes it hard to leave is the fear that your job is that you're scared you couldn't get it back - so create an exit plan that improves the odds of a return to something similar

[DebtSlaveNoMore]

Hey all, another year has passed. Here is an update on our journey.

December Income:




December Expenses:



Monthly Savings Rate: 88.1%
12 Month Savings Rate: 63.0%


Year End Review:

In 2023, our household networth continued it's journey into Fatfire territory with several contributing factors:

1. Sustained Household savings
2. Strong appreciation on Real estate holdings
3. Very strong gains in financial investments
4. Vesting of 70K worth of RSUs from my employer in April

So with these gains, our household NW has climbed above 2.8 million in 2023.


Life events:

Several events happened this past year that is making me rethink things in regards to the RE part of FIRE.

1. After many rounds of heated discussions, a decision was made by DW and her 2 sisters to not sell their deceased Mother's house, instead, the house would be subdivided into a 2 unit dwelling with 1 unit to be occupied by DW's Sister #2 who is unmarried, unemployed, and has some mental health issues. DW and DW's Sister #1 would rent out this other unit and use the rental money to maintain the house and help out Sister #2. So at this point, I think it's prudent to label this inheritance as a resource that my wife will use to exclusively take care of her sister for the foreseeable future. As such I'm not going to include it as part of our net worth.

2. Lifestyle inflation has really started to creep in over the last couple of years. We purchased a 2nd SUV (used 3 year old Honda CRV with cash). Our monthly grocery bill is well over $1200. We are regularly spending over $1000 dollars a month on dining out. We took multiple vacations this past year, including a 5 day spring break with just me and my son in a rented cabin in the mountains. My wife spends over $1000 a month on random consumer goods. Even I'm starting to spending around $50-$100 a month buying electronic gadgets and components for my tinkering activities. I know that these are all unnecessary luxuries and really goes against the spirit of frugality. And yes, I do realize that my former self from 10 years ago would be punching the current me in the face right now for setting money on fire. But these things seems to make our lives a easier and more comfortable. And I'm getting to an age where I'm having a hard time refusing creature comforts. And somehow this investment machine that I've built over the years is so efficient that we are spend all of this money on non-essentials and still achieving a very high increases in net worth.

3. At work, I continued going through the motions and doing what I considered to be the bare minimum amount of work to not get fired. In early 2023, there were massive rounds of layoffs across the tech industry and I was pretty sure that I was going to be laid off. In fact, I even started fantasizing about all the things that I was going to do with my life once I get laid off at work. However, in August, the company unexpectedly offered me a promotion with a significant pay pump along with another round of RSUs worth ~80K to be vested in February 2024. At this point, I literally have no idea how I'm still employed, let alone rewarded in such a manner by my company. They are literally positioning me as an executive thought leader within my organization, it's like something out of the movie Office Space. However with all that said, I'm obviously not going to turn down a literal crap ton of money being pushed my way.

4. My retired parents are in their sixties and traveling the world. Now my folks never had any kind of financial education nor did they do any sort of financial planning. They did however pay off their house mortgage and they always contributed the standard 4% into their 401Ks for 25 years. These 2 moves along with having pensions and social security allows them to have a very comfortable retirement. In between their various trips, I had a number of long conversations with my dad about my discontent with the day job and dreams of early retirement. The TLDR is that my dad thinks that my education, experience and potential would be monumentally wasted if I retired early. He thinks that I should continue working in Engineering and perhaps change what I'm doing to something more meaningful to me. Furthermore, He thinks that I have a responsibility to demonstrate to the next generation what it means to be hard working and self-disciplined and that my own retirement adventures can wait until my kids are adults. But my dad also mentioned that he would be proud of me no matter what I decided to do.


In conclusion:

I'm stuck in OMY purgatory unless/until something dramatically changes in my life. I don't know what will eventually shake me out of this stagnant state, but for now the massive golden handcuffs along with my own internal mental blocks are preventing me from leaving the corporate wage system. I think I could do it but I fear the consequences of this move and it's impact on my own sanity and my relationships with parents, DW, and children

[Scott 2]

Three years into my own FIRE, I think OMY has a lot to offer. Especially in a position like yours.

1. Around age 40, we start to lose a step. Both physically and mentally. Wisdom allows us to overcome, but eventually how we maximally contribute changes. I think this is more readily done within one's established context. This is an interesting book about the transition:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivahwitt ... c6da044eaa

2. The leverage offered in a successful corporate job is pretty high. You have money to make things happen outside of work, in addition to increasing impact through work. Making time to consider legacy is tough, but money is an effective tool. Charity, college funds, etc. Housing your wife's sister is a good example. As loved ones continue aging, these opportunities become more personal and obvious too.

3. FIRE, especially lean FIRE, carries its own load of time consuming BS. The corporate support structure insulates from some of those problems. No need to DIY repairs, hack travel, shop insurance companies, etc. Unless you're prepared to upset the entire family's patterns, the freedom to impact of FIRE tends to be overstated. Especially if you're able to substitute some money to compensate for the constrained time.

It's easy to take our default path for granted, but yours looks pretty good, IMO.

[MeloTheMelon]

I just read through the whole journal and wanted to thank you for all the updates over the years.
As someone who started in tech not too long ago your journey is really inspirational!

Did you think about gradually reducing work hours for the golden handcuff situation? Start by going down to 4 days a week and plan things for that day off. It's a lot easier to plan for one day a week and stick to it than to figure out what you will do every day for the upcoming years.
Although, I get your feeling about not being productive during your sabbatical, days seem to fly by without anything happening when you don't have the structure of a job.
A small exercise for me to get back control was to list everything I'm doing. I took a piece of paper with me everywhere and just added to the list as I went through my day, at the end I went over the list and marked every activity as either positive, neutral, or negative and thought about ways to limit the negative and increase the positive.
I'm not sure what your time sinks tend to be (for me it was YouTube and reading) but either digitally or physically blocking/removing these time sinks helped me a lot. Also just by creating the list, I went through the following days a lot more intentionally.

I can't say much about the situation with your wife and kids since I don't have either so take the following with a grain of salt.
When I grew up both my parents were always "at home" (in the sense that we lived and worked on a horse range). This was in hindsight incredible for my childhood because I always had them around when I needed them.
So in contrast to your dad's point of view, maybe reducing your hours to the mentioned 20 hours a week would be worth a lot more to your children than being an example of a hardworking man.