Early Retirement Extreme Forums

hey ERE forum, its been a long time but I still think about you guys. I liked posting and reading on this forum it really kept me going in the early days. We are not on the ERE path, that's been for a long time. I managed to live that way for a few years when I was still in grad school, unmarried, a...

I wonder if all the learning is worth it though, I have been doing it for years and investing a portion in value. However the skills aren't really tangible/ transferrable compared to learning to program, learning a language, or studying to be a dr etc. But then again lots of people have hobbies tha...

I'm a wanna be value investor, I mostly think it is good fun and massive learning opportunity. I just recently got into picking individual stocks, I was too afraid before our liquid assets got to ~10x living expenses and the mortgage was paid off. Right now I am actively investing about 5% of invest...

Hey ERE forum, been a while since I've visited the site but I've been thinking of you all. So much has happened its worth an update, apologies this is more of a brain dump rather than a well thought-out post. Getting right to the heart of the financials, since this is the ERE forum, our net worth is...

Alright another "ok" month spending wise again below $4000. Just cut a check though for 2022 property taxes ($3200) so next month doesn't stand a chance to be a repeat decreased spending month. The inflation going on, ouch!, is enough to make me rethink spending and get back to my levels w...

@Western Red Cedar ... feels great to pay off the mortgage! Mortgage was relatively small at $275,000 and we feel we got lucky with the place at the end of the day. Next time we go to SJI we will try Orca Island, seems to be very friendly to camping. This past month marks when my swimming got kickst...

August update. Many things going on in life and I'll hit the highlights. Participated in first triathlon, a sprint distance with a time of 1:30. My only objective was to finish the race and not be disqualified for whatever reason, so with expectations low I am pretty happy. Running is my strongest i...

Started trail running this past month. Why walk the trail when you can run it? In the past month ran 35 miles, biked 100 miles. Still trying to get a swim routine started before the triathlon in July but with Covid they are going to make me work for it. I swam for many years so not super worried but...

started reading your journal, thanks for sharing! I'm reaching out when I read of other family situations on the forum...strength in numbers! We're also shooting for ~$1.2M for FI with a paid off home but may keep going as high as ~$1.9M if we want to inflate our lifestyle (you know hot tubs and sea...

Great job M and thanks for starting this post... it resembles my family's situation somewhat and it helps to have insight in a parallel path. Being close to family combined with frugality you are getting seriously low spending numbers for a family of 6. Nice work! When my wife wasn't working she was...

It's a little weird to think about it but sometimes a person's bad luck or experience can have a positive benefit to other people. In this case, in our neighborhood people are getting their cars stolen when parked on the street (maybe three cars in the past 6 weeks or so). Our neighbors truck was on...

Finally did our taxes and found out we owed $8000 total federal and state. The past few years I've been owing taxes but this one was an eye popper! Got charged like $75 in interest. I guess I'll finally increase the amount removed from each paycheck. In other news I am dropping the big push for Fren...

hey Stasher, checked out your blog, thanks for sharing. We (myself, wife and kids) are slowly building up our outdoor gear arsenal and I've had my eye on bike packing and mountaineering (the wife and kids stay home for the more adventurous activities for now, kids are small). We moved to Oregon abou...

@Aspirant, yeah there are not too many of us family folk on here. Kids and ERE are like oil and water but I guess there are some people making it work out there. One day If we could get our family to MMM level of spending I would be super thrilled, we're pretty far away from that still. Saving still...

Another good month in net worth, not doing so well with monthly spending. I used to not count deductions from health spending account but now am counting withdrawals from health savings account. Monthly spending almost gets the complete picture, missing the $1000/month my employer pays for our healt...

dude you should be proud of your spreadsheets and graphs. Nice data sets going back years. Looking at the long term time trends make it a casebook study for fast financial independence.

Modified the spreadsheet a little and found some averaging errors. % SWR is the real one to look at and it uses input from the bolded columns to the left of it (using 4% rule). Mortgage will be paid off in June then will start funneling money to after tax accounts. By the end of the year % SWR shoul...

it feels good to get back to crunching numbers, especially now that the market is going bananas. It definitely has put our spending back in focus especially on food. I don't see our spending ever going much lower than this last month but we'll see. I imagine over the next couple months the % SWR gai...

things are moving fast 2birds! congrats on the new family working arrangement. It sounds like you have your ducks in a row so I think no matter what happens it will be good. You're a few years ahead of us so it is nice to hear your experiences to give a glimpse of how life could be in a couple years...

October monthly spending with averages accruing. Hope to maintain the monthly financial posts to keep the family and me focused. Again, not counting child care because at some point we won't need to pay but I guess it could easily morph into other expenses for the children. Something that also hit m...