Early Retirement Extreme Forums

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Interesting thought experiment. I would co-sign on your experience from my same/opposite perspective of having recently wandered into teaching as my primary gig. Every day I get at least one small validation of "meaningful" or "making a difference", but I hit burnout on all the other stuff and bother that comes along with the job any week I devote more than 20 hours max to this endeavor. There's also a bit of trade-off in variety vs. community. For instance, this week I was the guest teacher for a kindergarten that I had already covered on several other occasions, so the children all greeted me by name and some ran up and gave me a hug when I walked in the door.

I think teaching young disadvantaged children has a good deal of overlap with practical nursing, since every day I have to decide whether somebody really injured themselves on the playground, direct somebody with running green snot to clean up and thoroughly wash hands, and maybe check a head for lice. In my mind, both of these occupations also share a good deal of overlap with homemaker/gardener vocation, because you might check a head of cabbage for infestation and/or turn it into a pot of soup to nourish the health of a human.

At the other end of the spectrum would be endeavors I've engaged in "just" for money or fun, such as retail arbitrage (moving goods from clearance aisle of retail stores to internet venue), where all I was likely accomplishing was change of eventual landfill location for plastic crap. Obviously, one could go even further down this spectrum and engage in activities that were worse than meaningless, like unto "Glengarry Glen Ross."

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Kiva is great! My extended family opted a number years ago to start donating to Kiva instead of giving each other Christmas presents to create a sort of legacy fund for our family...It has since petered out as family members have passed away, but the idea was good! I also attempted to create something through the business school I attended as well, however the infrastructure to being a charitable legacy fund of MBAs became quickly overwhelming and my lack of desire to work hard was it's downfall...maybe, I'll take a crack at it again some day with renewed vigour.

It's cool to see your money/FI philosophies evolve as time goes on.

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Some years ago there was a forum user who spent his whole career as a part time/contract nurse. Worked out very well for him: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1757&hilit=bingeworker

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How was your trip, the move, life, Gf, ERE learning?

Inquiring minds would like to know. Financial pr0n welcome.

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Hey there, how did Q1 end up for you? I've moved up my date to June 1, 2019.

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Really digging the title switch. Based on the enthusiasm you've shown to this approach in various places, it makes sense! I too plan on getting back to journal writing, starting tracking monthly expenses/income again at the end of this month after a long hiatus while we sold our houses.

Also, cool pictures.

Dang, I'm not trying to "shame" by any means. Just genuine curiosity from someone who is on a similar path and values your contributions here.

I like your plan. And woah, I'm impressed by that spending over the past 12 months. It's where I hope to be in a years time.

Do you count Roth IRA as part of Retirement accounts or After Tax?

Cool pictures. Sounds like you're going to get great value for money on that annual national parks pass

Seems like a reasonable and well thought out plan.
As with all journals, the outdoors pictures are amonth the things I enjoy the most.
Remember to hit me up if your future slow travels will include Italy, I may be able to help with recommendations

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Including Yellowstone with South Dakota destinations will certainly work with good planning but it will change the character of the vacation. If you only have 10 days and like to settle in at some of the places, I'd recommend doing one South Dakota + Devil's Tower vacation and a separate Yellowstone + Tetons vacation. If you like to tick off a lot of destinations and don't mind more driving and logistics combine it all together. It depends on your interests.

Nice pics of Roosevelt. I like the buffalo.

Hi there CL, great to see you doing well on both the love and financial fronts! Regarding your plan, it's helpful that you've mentally divided it into two buckets which sets a limit to how much you're willing to deplete the portfolio. I expect that the biggest risk is not financial, but rather that the relationship ends before you reach phase 2. If it's very important for you to have that experience together, you might consider moving up the start date by (1) planning for part-time work during the trip, (2) you contributing some funds towards her portion, and/or (3) reducing the duration (maybe do a 3-6 month test run to validate interest, then save up for a multi-year trip if it still interests both of you). Regarding #3, doing a shorter trip might convince you and GF that it is ok to go before she is fully debt-free with nest egg saved. Another suggestion is to slow-travel within the US, selecting contracts based on interest not compensation, while taking the occasional international trip to scratch that itch. Or have GF (and maybe you too?) start looking for nursing jobs abroad and let that determine your destination. You've probably thought of it already, but that is what came to my mind.

Some other thoughts:

• Supposing you set a goal of covering expenses (i.e. not touching your pre-60 bucket) even with 0% real returns that will put your combined net worth at 13 years when those buckets are combined in old age.
• Instead of SS as an afterthought, maybe we should be taking it into consideration for AA. The reasoning being, if SS actually does pay out, paper assets likely would have done ok. If we presume the converse is also true, this would imply a high correlation between SS payout and equity/bond returns, meaning there would be some systemic failures that would take out the portfolio AND your safety net. This would suggest that tilting the AA towards hard assets would offer a higher likelihood of success even if the expected return is lower.
• Until you're fully FI, you're not financially immune from the proverbial "hit by a bus" disaster. But since your footprint is only ~2 jacobs (excellent work btw!) it's likely not going to be catastrophic if you can pull off some side income.
• When you take a break from nursing, consider part-time freelancing (e.g. odesk) to develop new skills while generating a side income and having fun (maybe?)

I'm excited to see the Deliberately coasting to FI idea put to practice and eagerly await the results of this experiment!