I am a native to the wonderful state of Colorado. I was born near the mountains (which is fortunate, since I love to climb them!) and I haven't spent a long time away from them since. I have always been in awe of these mountains, and I feel most peaceful when I spend time on them.
I've been an avid reader of ERE and other FI blogs for quite a while now. I've spent a good amount of time living in an ERE fashion (around 8400-9000/yr minus schooling, a little high around here but I wasn't actually consciously trying to live in an FI manner) and in my final year of schooling found my situation changing with a reasonable job. I had more money, and with my misguided understanding of society I dictated that I would need to spend more money
. Most of this year I probably spent about 100 dollars/week buying a lot of things I didn't need, and after a while I realized that buying these things wasn't going to lead me to happiness. I looked around to try and gain an understanding of different perspectives and see if there were other choices than living like the majority of my family and friends.I've also never been a person who was happy to work a 9-5 existence. Especially during schooling. I earned an undergraduate degree in physics and ended up working in programming. The actual 8-5 grind I have found is not so bad, as it is not very stressful (to me, some others around me seem to be VERY stressed out a lot of the time) and pays me probably 80-85% more than I need to live luxuriously (in my own opinion).
The combination of the above factors lead me down a long path that eventually wound up with me here. I spent a lot of months spending much of my down time just researching more and more about becoming financially independent (and other offshoots from these ideas), and I think that I have finally become knowledgeable enough on the subject to not make a fool out of myself in front of you guys
.So I just wanted to drop in and say hello. Thanks for all of the great forum posts and recommended readings, they have been very helpful in forming a knowledge base about the ERE mindset and lifestyle.