Early Retirement - Leaving the Start Line
Posted: Mon May 20, 2019 4:09 am
Hi there,
My name is Ledimir. I am new to the Early Retirement Extreme forum. I found the site and forum when I started reading Mr. Money Mustache’s site and learned that early retirement is possible by doing two things, increasing your income and decreasing your spending. Increasing your income requires skill, a bit of luck, but also patience. I wanted actionable steps that I could follow immediately, so I focused on the decreasing spending portion. What can I do today to make progress toward never having to sell my time for a couple of dollars? Because my time is finite, I’d rather do with it as I please. So let’s run more, let’s explore more, let’s be curious instead of managed, monitored, and limited.
And so, about me. I am 26 years old and 20 days. I am in a serious relationship with my girlfriend and living with my mother and sister in New York City. I am an INFJ. Thankfully, I have no student debt and no credit card debit. New York is very expensive, but I manage pretty well and am able to keep expenses under $800 per month. I don’t own a car, I use the train and metro service. I want to begin biking to work, a cool 2-7 miles depending on the station I’m at on a given day.
$400 - Rent
$45 - Phone and Internet Service
$140 - food
$200 - miscellaneous expenses [including metro cards, girlfriends gas, etc.]
The journey is long, but I am very excited. I can do so much better and get so much smarter financially. I will work to continually improve and cut expenses whenever possible. Joining this community will be so important because having people with similar goals suddenly makes this the normal and rational thing to do. No longer will I feel crazy for choosing to live cheaply and expensively in perhaps the most wasteful city in the world.
My name is Ledimir. I am new to the Early Retirement Extreme forum. I found the site and forum when I started reading Mr. Money Mustache’s site and learned that early retirement is possible by doing two things, increasing your income and decreasing your spending. Increasing your income requires skill, a bit of luck, but also patience. I wanted actionable steps that I could follow immediately, so I focused on the decreasing spending portion. What can I do today to make progress toward never having to sell my time for a couple of dollars? Because my time is finite, I’d rather do with it as I please. So let’s run more, let’s explore more, let’s be curious instead of managed, monitored, and limited.
And so, about me. I am 26 years old and 20 days. I am in a serious relationship with my girlfriend and living with my mother and sister in New York City. I am an INFJ. Thankfully, I have no student debt and no credit card debit. New York is very expensive, but I manage pretty well and am able to keep expenses under $800 per month. I don’t own a car, I use the train and metro service. I want to begin biking to work, a cool 2-7 miles depending on the station I’m at on a given day.
$400 - Rent
$45 - Phone and Internet Service
$140 - food
$200 - miscellaneous expenses [including metro cards, girlfriends gas, etc.]
The journey is long, but I am very excited. I can do so much better and get so much smarter financially. I will work to continually improve and cut expenses whenever possible. Joining this community will be so important because having people with similar goals suddenly makes this the normal and rational thing to do. No longer will I feel crazy for choosing to live cheaply and expensively in perhaps the most wasteful city in the world.