Greetings from the Heartland

JustChristine · Post by **JustChristine** » Wed Jul 21, 2010 11:21 pm

Hi, I'm Christine. I'm a 34yo computer programmer/amatuer landlord in Wisconsin. Long story short, I graduated college in a boatload of debt with a career that I'm pretty good at but have grown to hate. For the past 10 years, I've been doing everything I can to get myself in a position financially to be able to switch careers. I've always been fairly frugal and a bit of a minimalist(thanks to packrat parents) so the path to early retirement shouldn't be too hard now that my student loans are paid off. After finding this site in February, I've been crunching numbers and coming up with a game plan for the quickest exit from aforementioned hated career. Everything seems to come to alignment in 2014, when I'll have the mortgage on my duplex paid off and have full vesting in my 401k and pension plans. At that point, it looks like a part time fluff job will get the bills paid

No journey is very fun by yourself, so here I am looking for kindred spirits.

Steve Austin · Post by **Steve Austin** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 12:27 am

I do software, too, so figured I would ask a question in code. ;-\
( switch careers == part time fluff job ) == true ?

GetLaidOff · Post by **GetLaidOff** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 7:05 am

Christine,
I'm curious--is there a specific career you're trying to switch to?

JustChristine · Post by **JustChristine** » Thu Jul 22, 2010 11:25 pm

@Steve LOL not quite. Original goal was to switch careers...I was thinking about teaching. Now with this ERE idea in my head, I'm pretty sure that in 4yrs I can live comfortably with just a part-time minimum wage type job. Sales clerk at my favorite clothing store or delivering newspapers or something equally mindless that gets me out of the house. I've also toyed with the idea of investing in a couple more rental units but that would require working longer to raise enough capital. It's all a little vague right now and depends on what my personal life looks like at that time.
@GetLaidOff I guess the ultimate goal is to switch to a full-time career of retirement

Steve Austin · Post by **Steve Austin** » Sat Jul 24, 2010 8:02 pm

"equally mindless that gets [one] out of the house" -- I think there is a benefit, because it's mindless it in fact opens the mind to have some time to think about something important, but not immediately or directly. If I'm stuck on a particular problem, mindless tasks (e.g. digging an irrigation trench or some other heavy lifting kind of work) allow me to solve it laterally. The answer "just comes to me", which of course indicates that I was still solving the problem all along, just not intentionally. Getting good sleep / dreaming seems to work, too, but I have trouble in that area, so not as much experience with it.