I’ve hesitated to start writing this journal as I think my relationship to my finances is so shot through with my emotional and philosophical concerns that it feels like a bunch of baggage to throw out into the internet for a site that’s about rice recipes and bike repair (jk), but as I seem to find myself returning often to this forum, I think it makes sense to be a bit more a member of the community.
I am 29, live in Denver. I have a job making $52,000 a year, and have a small but growing net worth. I often feel like my nut should be bigger, as I read Early Retirement Extreme when I was still in college, around 2008, and have read the blog and forums and related blogs since that time. But I guess things could be much worse. I graduated from University of Michigan in 2010 after studying Econ and Philosophy with $26,000 in debt, and went abroad to teach Spanish for two years. The job abroad paid 800 euro/mo the first year, and 1000 euro/mo the second. I found it difficult to save during that time, and ended up with about $3,000 in savings, while my loans were deferred and accumulated $10,000 in capitalized interest. My time in Spain was great, but I realized that I liked the anonymity and ease of life in my native language and came back to the USA.
I was scared of returning to the economy in Michigan (this was 2012), and so I followed a love interest to Colorado, and lived in a large closet with some friends for $125/mo in Boulder, while working a fairly hellish tax resolution job for 8 months. I applied for jobs like mad and got a position at an economic development lender in a junior position for $35,000 a year. I moved into a $500/mo studio in Denver. Since then, I bought a condo for $85,000, and got spooked over how much it was appreciating, and the inability of the COA to maintain a reasonable reserve, and sold for $115,000. I used all the profits to pay off my loans and save more, and sent $500 to each of my sisters. I have also been promoted at my company over time, and now have lost the junior part of my title, and as I said, make $52,000. My net worth is as follows:
Emergency Fund: $10K
HSA: $6K
2040 Target Date Vanguard Fund: $22K
Retirement accounts: $50K
Total: $88K
I live in an apartment with a roommate for $570 a month and don’t own a car. I’m saving between $1,900-$2,000 a month. I have a girlfriend (not the original love interest) who accepts me for my quirks and thinks the FI-bound lifestyle is cool and is supportive. I have a bus pass through work, so that’s free for me. I have a small group of friends here, but we get along pretty well. I don’t like being so far from family or Michigan’s natural environment, and think about moving back to the Midwest, but it’s hard to when the economy here seems so much healthier.
I struggle somewhat with a dysthemic/depressive streak, and have been in therapy for the past couple years. As an INTP, I find the only thing that gets me excited are various big ideas/”insight porn”, but haven’t found a creative competency that I find rewarding. I read Every Cradle a Grave and the Conspiracy Against The Human Race, and they have left me very uncertain about whether it could be ethical to have kids, yet I feel scared of how I will feel as an old man without a family or a successful creative career to look back on. I sometimes fantasize about taking my <$300 per month from my savings and just being a bum, but I know from experience that I’m not that big a fan of having to search for places to sleep, of having to watch all your shit all the time, and always feeling grubby, and I am fearful of losing the optionality of earning power if I leave the work force. But it seems like at the rate I am going, I will not have ERE options until much later, and in the meantime, I am working in a job that is quite stressful, and that I don’t feel “self-actualized”. I worry that I will finally save enough money to do what I want and find my opportunities to do anything I can really be satisfied with will have passed during accumulation.
I find myself thinking of my net worth often as a sort of mental idol that I ward off negative feelings towards my job. I did write a long essay on shittiness of jobs to try to exorcise these negative feelings last year, but it didn’t seem to help that much. I recently took a vacation to Spain to visit old friends, and my concerns with money did decrease without the job to worry about for a week. But seeing the employment situation for people my age in Spain left me feeling confused about whether I’m allowed to want something different, or if I am just thinking negatively and not appreciating how I already have it better than most from a financial point-of-view, and it’s my own screwed up preferences and anxieties that prevent me from having the higher quality of life that even people in much materially poorer societies enjoy.
I find myself trying to avoid financial independence message board where people specifically talk about their savings and income, such as the FI-related subreddits, as I worry it leads to me obsessing with money more, and also feeling extremely inadequate when I read about 26 year old couples who have $200K saved, not to mention the 23 year olds with $500K from the crazy economy we now live in. Seems like everyone’s a computer programmer…
I took a Udacity web development course and finished it, but didn’t really feel adequately prepared, or convinced that the career change was a smart one. It seems very visually focused, which I am not, and requiring constant study to stay on top of technologies ever changing, all basically to get people to visit sites to make miniscule amounts of ad revenue.
But enough bellyaching! I do enjoy various activities, and am working through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and working on improving in Chess. I keep up my Spanish studies with Anki, and I do find time to read. I cook a lot, and go out for drinks with friends and my girlfriend fairly often. I play tennis, and try to go jogging, although I haven’t been able to lately due to a knee injury (from running). Things are okay I suppose. But I feel like thinking about FI is creating a weird premature midlife crisis in which I need to decide what I care about now before it’s too late, and decide which potential futures to close.
I feel like FI ideas should be freeing, but I think I have found a way to make them not so much. Lately I have been thinking that working a job is maybe like sleeping, and instead of sleeping 8 hours, I am sleeping 16 hours, and I am ERE already--just a late sleeper! Clearly I’m slipping into madness
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
Hmm, well anyway, thanks for reading. I think the individuals who post on this forum are wonderful and insightful--also giving and kind. I really admire the supportive community, and the wide supply of interesting points of view that are represented. Thanks for letting me introduce myself and get some thoughts off my chest!