The Path to Freedom

[detect_148]

Lately, I have been torn, fully undecided and often brooding.

I know that I have enough wealth to stop working, that is clear. My tax strategy post FI is optimal and robust. My ability to invest effectively is questionable.

But my job is easy AF and I mean that. I am a master at figuring out how to do the bare minimum. The money is good. I am highly motivated by greed. I don’t know if I will ever have it this good again.

The mountains call. I want to snowboard every day that I possibly can next season and that means I only will be able to work until December. This is non negotiable. I feel it in my soul. I think about it every moment of every day.

I do not know if I will be able to stay retired forever if I leave now. ERE is a virtuous life and I am a man of vice and riotous living. I have had to dial back substantially to make it this far, but temptations are always clouding my mind. I do not know if I can hold them back forever. There is no dignity in labor. If I run out of money I will perhaps have to be ok with being a slave again or instead, with wrapping a cheap rental car around a telephone pole.

I was not meant for this dilemma. My parents were supposed to be wealthy aristocrats and my life, one of endless leisure. God has erred.

[Biscuits and Gravy]

I was not meant for this dilemma. My parents were supposed to be wealthy aristocrats and my life, one of endless leisure. God has erred.

Amen, brother.

[detect_148]

I'm learning that I don't seem to have the stomach for market volatility that I thought I did. My earnings from earned income this year are working out to be higher than they ever have before, but in spite of that, my net worth is still down 6.5% to date which is about 6 months worth of earned income. If I had been unemployed during this time I would have been shitting my pants. It would have been a huge drag on my mental health. The stakes are higher for me now than ever before so the swings in numeric terms every time the market takes a leg down represent years of savings. I've increased my cash position gradually while still dollar cost averaging the rest of my savings into index funds. I now have over a year of expenses saved in cash, not including expected dividends in the taxable portfolio which gives me a little more comfort.

My current spending is just under a 3% withdrawal rate and I should feel comfortable stepping away from work based on that, but I have this nagging financial insecurity that I just can't shake. I have a desire to see inflation and the markets settle down a bit before I stop working. I'm also feeling like remorse for what I perceive as crucial strategic mistakes. When I first learned about ERE I made a deliberate decision to rent hack instead of buying a house and trying to rent out the rooms. Home ownership didn't fit with my long term goals and tax strategy and still doesn't, but with how much home prices have surged and how sticky the prices have been in my local market this year, I'm thinking that I made a big mistake. I also don't like the idea of using debt. It just feels like a trap and an unacceptable risk and I haven't been able to change that mindset. If I had a longer term outlook on my current job I might feel differently. I am a compulsive tax optimizer so the thought of selling my equities to buy a house and paying those capital gain taxes is untenable.

My angst this year has caused me to question whether or not I belong in this community at all. What drew me to ERE in the first place is primarily that I don't like to fail. I am a perfectionist. I wanted to be financially successful and in control so I chose a strategy with a 100% success rate, provided that I didn't fuck it up by not sticking to the program. I didn't take big risks financially or with my career and I don't know if that was the best strategy. I wonder what I could have achieved had I invested in myself more. Also, I have found hard limits on how low I can push my spending. When I get below 2.5 JAFI I start to get depressed. The truth is, I really do want to consume more than I currently am. Primarily, I want to living in a spacious domicile by myself with architecturally pleasing features with tasteful decor, house plants, and adjacent green space, but I haven't figured out how to do that without paying $2k+/mo. I want to spend 6 months out of the year snowboarding as much as I can. Decreasing my spending feels both liberating and painful at the same time. Finally, I want to go to a reputable physician for a hair transplant, probably by the time I turn 40. I am quite vain and cannot accept the fact that my hair is thinning. This is probably the most non-ERE pursuit imaginable to me, but I stand by it. I used to take personal responsibility for protecting the environment and I still care deeply about it, but I genuinely believe that it is doomed. Humanity's propensity to consume is insatiable and the incentives to deplete our natural resources are just too strong.

I want to apologize for being negative and bitchy. I am not looking for sympathy or advice or anything. This is the only outlet I really have to vent about this stuff now that RFS is gone. We had been chillin for awhile earlier this year. He is a cool dude. Also, I did not sleep well last night so I will probably be well rested and happy tomorrow.

I'm making a deliberate effort to change my mindset. I have been volunteering to pick up trash on the roads adjacent to my neighborhood, strength training consistently for the first time in my life, reading more than I have in years, and exploring some entrepreneurship opportunities that can be pursued in parallel to my career. I'm finally starting to realize that with some creativity and skillful maneuvering, it is possible to cast some webs to collect money. If I can just siphon off $10k per year from business pursuits, I will have all I need, in addition to my other passive income, to sustain my current lifestyle.The business idea I am focusing on right now is small. It's a very simple idea/product with few competitors and a customer base that is limited geographically. The problem that I've had in the past with business ideas is that my aspirations were far in excess of my ability and I grew frustrated quickly and gave up. I think attempting micro-business in conjunction with ERE could be quite powerful because it has potential for scaleability and growth that can eventually be decoupled from my direct time investment.

[detect_148]

The past month has been quite pleasant. Work has been winding down quite a bit for the end of the year so I have been able to devote much of my energy to other interests.

I've been continuing to try to justify my decision to continue working and in doing so have been consuming FIRE content from other blogs to get more diverse perspectives. This made me aware of the concept of sequence of return risk which I may have only glanced over previously. The analyses that I have seen show that the risk of portfolio failure is significantly decreased and the maximum successful safe withdrawal rate is significantly increased when poor investment returns don't occur in the early years of a person's retirement. For this reason, I am perfectly fine with hanging onto my job for a little bit longer and continuing with a savings rate of ~70 - 80% while riding out the current bear market/recession/interest rate cycle. It seems like most, if not all of the mainstream FIRE influencers that I follow benefitted from retiring near the bottom of a bear market or in the early stages of a bull market. I'm convinced this is a major factor in their success.

I wanted to give myself permission to do more snowboarding this coming year so I put a lot of effort into travel hacking/planning over the past few months. I organized two snowboarding trips in the winter/spring with very reasonable expenditure by using airline miles/credit card points, cost sharing with friends, identifying public transportation routes between the airport/slopes, and buying an epic pass as early as possible.

I recently moved to a new house with two roommates. Rent is $600/mo. and utilities/internet are working out to be about $150/mo. This is more than I have been paying in recent years, but the house is in one of the nicer areas of my city and the location is a reasonable biking distance from several public parks and the climbing gym that I frequent.

Currently reading short stories by Nikolay Gogol. I sometimes wish that I could motivate myself to read more non-fiction, but I see a lot of instructive value in fiction too, especially when it is high quality.

[detect_148]

Life has been good this year. 2022 was hard on my psyche because I am long past the point where I can out-earn the volatility in my investment portfolio. In spite of that, I've been operating solidly between a 3% and 3.5% withdrawal rate and 76% savings rate for the past year without being too restrictive with spending. My investment returns have been ok this year, but I'm lagging the SP500. I think my portfolio allocation is reasonable, but I intend to find ways to improve where I can.

I took two snowboarding trips out west on the epic pass. The conditions were the best I've ever experienced and the trip gave me some fond memories. I mostly enjoyed the scenery, especially the view from Breckenridge at the top of peak 8. Lodging was the most expensive part of these trips, but I was able to cram 4 dudes into a small hotel room in Park City and stay at a Hostel during my time at Breck. Travel points were used for the flights, so the overall cost worked out to be pretty reasonable. The benefits of what I have been building for the last 9 years are beginning to sink in and I have been feeling a lot of gratitude. There are times when the greed monster possesses my soul and I crave more wealth, but other days I look around me and I know that I have everything that I need. I feel contentment, even joy.

I'm in a long term relationship now. It has mostly been a positive experience, but the SO has been pushing me to address my avoidant attachment style. Sometimes this is not fun, but I think it is a good learning experience for me. It may end up being the case that I am better off being partnered with a reptile, but I'm willing to give vulnerability with a human a try. This woman is not ERE oriented and has a history of making poor decisions with money and being controlled by it. She is actively trying to improve for her own sake. Shortly I after I met her, I noticed course materials on her desk from Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace" class. As we've talked more about our views on money, it has become apparent that we are not on the same page, ideologically. Fortunately, she has no intention of ever being married, having children, or having joint finances so I'm not necessarily running away at this point. I'm just trying to help her improve any way I can.

[detect_148]

For the past year, I have been setting up a container garden in my yard and have had many many wonderful harvests. I also pollinated and harvested from paw paw trees in the green spaces near my house. I gathered hazelnuts and black walnuts this year and made my own nut butter.

I'm still at the same job that I have been at since 2018 and the same company since 2014. My spending rate relative to my investments is about 2%. I'm sitting pretty financially and am planning to leave my job soon. In spite of all the great things about my work situation (great boss, stress free work, good compensation) over the past couple years it has become instinctively clear to me that this season of my life is over and it's time to turn my focus elsewhere. I used to feel like I had golden handcuffs, but now I have gotten to the point where additional money feels superfluous and therefore, my time is wasted in acquiring it. I had fear of leaving my job, but it now seems like the main thing keeping me in place now is force of habit. I also anticipate awkwardness in having to explain to my family, friends, and colleagues my decision to leave. There is a regrettable immense social pressure to be employed that I perceive from all fronts that I would prefer not to have to confront at all.

I have been learning more about passive real estate investing and I decided to participate in a local syndication deal as a limited partner. I was able to meet the sponsor and check out the property so that was helpful as this is all new to me. It has taken me months to learn the lingo such that I could review the business plan, operating agreements, etc. It all makes sense to me for the most part, but I'm not sure that I yet see the bigger picture on how to pick the right deal. I also don't know if I will do many investments like this in the future, but I'm trying to find ways to diversify out of the stock market and am keeping an open mind. While I hope to make money on this investment, it also is going to be first and foremost a learning opportunity. These real estate deals offer pass through depreciation and boast of favorable returns, but I perceive that there is a lot more risk with this structure compared to a REIT for instance.

The past couple of years I have really shifted my focus away from accumulating and more towards identifying my values and how I want to spend the rest of my life. I'm planning on going to Mexico for a few weeks in December to evaluate if I still have a taste for living in a different culture. I find the most joy and engagement with life when I am in novel situations. I also believe that our time perception slows down when we have to navigate change/novelty so it would effectively be a way to increase my lifespan. I just renewed my lease so I wouldn't be moving until later next year, but there are still a few national parks I want to visit and few hikes that I have been aspiring to complete before I leave the country.

After taking philosophy in college, I was no longer sure what to make of religion (Christianity in my case). This year I have been making a deliberate effort to reexamine it with fresh eyes. As a deeply skeptical person, I have always thought that the bible is a collection of stories set out to communicate and enforce a moral standard that was determined to best lead to a flourishing society. I think this moral standard is baked into most western countries to a large extent so I am almost obliged to adopt it. However, if I can disprove the case for God, it seems that I can safely act in my own best interest at all costs to the extent that I can get away with it. This is an ongoing project and very well could take the rest of my life to resolve internally. In my opinion, Christianity hinges on whether or not it has accurately fulfills Old Testament prophecy so that is the next thing I want to focus on studying.

[DutchGirl]

I'm still at the same job that I have been at since 2018 and the same company since 2014. My spending rate relative to my investments is about 2%. I'm sitting pretty financially and am planning to leave my job soon. In spite of all the great things about my work situation (great boss, stress free work, good compensation) over the past couple years it has become instinctively clear to me that this season of my life is over and it's time to turn my focus elsewhere. I used to feel like I had golden handcuffs, but now I have gotten to the point where additional money feels superfluous and therefore, my time is wasted in acquiring it. I had fear of leaving my job, but it now seems like the main thing keeping me in place now is force of habit. I also anticipate awkwardness in having to explain to my family, friends, and colleagues my decision to leave. There is a regrettable immense social pressure to be employed that I perceive from all fronts that I would prefer not to have to confront at all.

Hurray, you're getting really close to be ready to leave! Comparing this to your post from June 2022, you've developed, and I think in a positive way. So: any important dates? (Like a bonus coming in February, or something like that). Have you figured out healthcare/health insurance? Then maybe it's time to set the date to quit? For your colleagues you could tell them that you're taking a sabbatical, or will take some time to consider your next career step. None of that is a lie. For acquaintances, you could call yourself a portfolio manager. (It's your own portfolio, and it takes maybe a day a month, but they don't need to know that).

[detect_148]

The day has finally come. I quit my job two days ago. I have been working for the same company for just over 11 years. This long experiment is over and I can confirm that the math of FIRE works (up to this point at least ). I agreed to hang around at work full time for a little while and then part time for a couple of months to aid with transition planning.

Personally, I have been well below a 4% withdrawal rate for probably a few years, but I had a lot of personal development and self exploration to do before I could actually pull the trigger and quit. I am pretty risk averse and to leave a well paid and secure job like I had looks insane from the perspective of the people around me and initially it did to myself too.

A few things shifted that allowed me to leave and I'll share this with the hope that maybe it will benefit someone in a similar position that can look for these signs.

1. At some point the money didn't really matter anymore. I fear poverty more than death, which is why Jacob's original idea of retiring on ~$200,000 really does not appeal to me. Regardless of how well he lived in the early days of his retirement, it just feels too poverty adjacent for my taste . I mean, I just find myself wanting a bigger buffer. But on the other hand, as I kept saving and kept saving. I started checking my balances less and less. and when I noticed big swings of $100k+ up or down, I felt nothing, I gave zero shits.

When I did my first internship in college there was this guy named Gary who was in his 60s. He had worked for the same company doing technical writing for his entire career, lived in the same shitty house the entire time, never got married or had kids, and ate ham and mustard sandwiches every day for lunch. Gary was hilarious. He did whatever he wanted to and said whatever he wanted to which usually came in the form of making inappropriate jokes that would have HR lecturing him on a regular basis, but never firing him because he was too valuable. One of the other interns used to joke with Gary, saying things like, "Hey Gary we just got paid today, I just thought I'd remind you because I'm sure you didn't notice!" Back in those days, my biweekly paycheck at $19/hour was a huge deal to me and I couldn't imagine not noticing it. But now, even at a considerably higher payscale, my paychecks make no material difference in my life and it is a weird, but real phenomenon.

2. I wasn't willing to tolerate the inconvenience or discomfort of working anymore. In reality, my job wasn't that bad, as I've said before. My hours weren't that long. The work not too demanding or stressful. I got along great with my colleagues. But the value of the paycheck and benefits wasn't enough for me to keep me willing to wake up at 5am and drive in traffic on a dangerous highway 5 days a week to do something that I wasn't eager to be doing.

3. I fully considered the tradeoffs of my decision to quit and I accept them. I am not decisive. It took me multiple years to consider the consequences of leaving my job and dropping out of the workforce. There are downsides. I will likely not be able to participate in mainstream society in a meaningful way. I could slowly drift into poverty. I could be perceived as a loser. I will be considerably less attractive to women. I won't have a gigantic pile of money to attempt to spend or give away if I live to old age. The vast majority of people will not be able to relate to my life circumstances. A lot of these consequences are social which I find that I care less about as I age. I've gained faith in my ability to course correct if there are adverse financial conditions in the economy. For example, if my investment returns are habitually poor, I'm sure that I can find something to do to earn money, even if just part time. I do have a low enough safe withdrawal rate currently, that I can cut my spending as needed.

4. I took a couple international trips in the last six months and have decided that geoarbitrage is a very legitimate option for me. This strategy brings me from "doing fine" in the United States to living luxuriously overseas. I went to Vietnam and Mexico for a couple weeks each in the last few months. I had a fantastic experience, but I will acknowledge that neither country is perfect. I have been working very hard on improving my spanish for the last 7 months and I can see myself living for a period of time in Mexico to take it to the next level. The pull of my existing social circles here in the states may win out in the end, but I intend to fully explore this option before deciding what I want to do long term.

5. Ultimately, I realized the golden handcuffs had become a purely mental prison. I remember when I first got a job at a golf course when I was in high school, a colleague trained me to work the front desk selling merch and booking tee times. When I came into work, I would always ask him how he was doing and he would say, "another day in paradise." I never knew what that meant and found it to be a markedly strange thing to say seeing as we were working at pretty average golf course getting paid poorly, but I was pretty sure it was sarcastic. I continued hearing this phrase throughout my career including the very same day that I quit! I still don't fully understand it and it has never been explained to me, I've even tried googling it and came up with nothing. As I've gotten to know the people that say it, I believe that in many cases, most of them have financial problems in the form of debt or huge financial responsibilities in general. They are people that are legitimately trapped. They can't get by without their income because of their specific circumstances.

My last romantic relationship taught me a lesson. It took me awhile to realize, but I was having a pretty bad experience. I often felt anxious and stressed and was routinely trying to meet expectations that I felt were unrealistic and unfair. I stayed for awhile for various reasons, but at some point I had the realization that I could simply walk away. That's what I did. It felt like in an instant I had broken free from the weight of invisible chains that were only generated by my mind.

It went similarly with my job. At some point, I realized that unlike many of my peers, the financial necessity of remaining there had been removed. I certainly felt like I had golden handcuffs due to the level of compensation and benefits that I had, but I also had the key to escape. It became simply a personal choice of whether or not to free myself.

@DutchGirl - Thanks for the comment. I did end up waiting for my bonus in April, though it didn't matter much. The company's performance has not been great. When I quit, I pitched it as a desire to do some long term travel which I figured normal people might be able to understand a little better. My boss was very supportive and understood. Really everyone so far has been supportive, it's just that the level of understanding varies. I think for now, I am ok with referring to myself as unemployed. I don't want to allude to the reality of my financial situation too much.

[Stasher]

Congratulations Detect, all the best on the next stage of your journey in life. Who knows, maybe it will be "another day in paradise".

[bookworm]

There are downsides. I will likely not be able to participate in mainstream society in a meaningful way. I could slowly drift into poverty...

That's the spirit. I also find it helpful to do a negative visualization of worst case scenario, and come to peace with that. It's the price of admission for choosing freedom rather than acquiescing to what is socially prescribed. And of course the future could turn out quite different.

Like you, I only "felt FI" with a buffer on actual spending. Congrats on taking the leap!

[delay]

Thanks for sharing! Interesting to read how your journey goes on. It gets harder to make friends as one grows older. So don't underestimate "the pull of my existing social circles".

When I came into work, I would always ask him how he was doing and he would say, "another day in paradise."

To offer an explanation other than the sarcastic one, everything is relative. There are horrible, horrible places to work. Some bosses reign like despots and make a sport of inflicting pain on their workers. Some companies withhold pay, deny leave, or demand unpaid overtime. Some blue collar jobs come with real danger for your health, like a butcher factory or a blast furnace, where everyone knows maimed former colleagues. Some white collar jobs come with mental torture like psychological games and "squid game" style group dynamics. Imagine combining two of these things. Then a job at a golf course really is "another day in paradise".