Thank you all for the warm welcome!
@prognastat the answer is complicated. It's been a decade-long journey so far, which I can elaborate on elsewhere (journal, probably). The short version is anxiety over what the future may hold. I didn't want to be held to be tied to a job or employer I didn't like. The fear and desire for FU money eventually morphed into FIRE and now I'd say I've come back around to a more comfortable relationship with money. Right now I'd say my goal is semi-ERE.
@wolf Unfortunately no. I'm still a grad student and have a couple years left. My stipend is pretty generous though, by my standards. My savings rate right now is about 50%, and I'm still in school. It will be very high after I graduate. Probably in the neighborhood of 80%.
@SavingWithBabies I'm not sure. I think you'd have to ask me a decade from now. In retrospect I look at all the paths that I could have taken, and I think I made the right choices for me personally. But I don't think I'd recommend it for most. Different people are different. All those other paths - this one wouldn't be the most "enjoyable", per se. I'm not quite sure how to put it. Maybe I mean that in the moment, some was fun, some was heart-wrenching, some was satisfying, and some was boring. And if I think I made different choices, the ones that I was tempted to make to play it safe, I would have missed out on a great number of things that changed my life, for better or worse. So yes, I think I'd take the same path. I don't have definite plans to shorten my time to ERE currently. I generally like my job and I hope I continue to like it. And when I no longer like it, I hope to have enough money that I can change careers to something I do enjoy. Or to take time off to find that thing that I'll like to do when the time comes that chemistry is no longer fun. I think my experience is similar to yours - it's worked out well so far, somehow. I did kind of have a plan, and do. But best laid plans and all that
