Hey folks!
Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2023 4:57 pm
Hey there! Just introducing myself. 30yo male, life with my 30yo wife and two kids (6yo girl and 4yo boy) in a rural area in southeast USA. I was first exposed to FIRE via MMM in August 2021 and knew it was the way I needed to go, but based on the burnout I was dealing with in my job that I needed to bookmark it mentally and come back to it in January 2023 after I got a new job and had a year of stability (2022) for my family with no new things.
January 2023 came and I devoured several books on FIRE/ERE including Jacob's book. (What a great book.) Wife and I slashed our expenses from about $3700 to $2500 per month nearly overnight. Cut a lot of junk costs thanks to Jacob's book and realization that we were paying for certain things (some types of insurance) more out of fear than sound economics. As much money as possible this year is going to go directly to paying off some debts we have, and will be hopefully debt-free by the end of Q3.
My income primarily comes from my day job in software design. I have a side hustle that makes probably $200 per month - not a killer income, but a source of joy to me and a labor of love that happens to make money. I also have some experience in other design work and make an extra few thousand $/yr from that.
Wife has her own startup that's poised to grow very sharply this year - no debt, profitable, just a matter of turning up the marketing.
We homeschool our two kids, and my daughter makes money by helping me fulfill orders for my side hustle. I'm using it to impress upon her the concept of investing vs saving-to-spend. Our homeschooling track for them will involve equipping them with all the principles in the ERE book such that both of them can retire no later than 25.
My wife's and my goal is to retire within the next 5 years and devote the rest of our life to research and legal work on behalf of the abused and trafficked.
Pretty much it! Happy to answer any questions that don't involve identifying information. I'm thinking of starting a journal but probably will continue it on my blog, deepfinancejourney.blogspot.com. The first few posts there are super rough because I didn't want to procrastinate for the sake of perfection, but I'm working on a way of doing more substantial regular postings, maybe on a monthly cadence.
January 2023 came and I devoured several books on FIRE/ERE including Jacob's book. (What a great book.) Wife and I slashed our expenses from about $3700 to $2500 per month nearly overnight. Cut a lot of junk costs thanks to Jacob's book and realization that we were paying for certain things (some types of insurance) more out of fear than sound economics. As much money as possible this year is going to go directly to paying off some debts we have, and will be hopefully debt-free by the end of Q3.
My income primarily comes from my day job in software design. I have a side hustle that makes probably $200 per month - not a killer income, but a source of joy to me and a labor of love that happens to make money. I also have some experience in other design work and make an extra few thousand $/yr from that.
Wife has her own startup that's poised to grow very sharply this year - no debt, profitable, just a matter of turning up the marketing.
We homeschool our two kids, and my daughter makes money by helping me fulfill orders for my side hustle. I'm using it to impress upon her the concept of investing vs saving-to-spend. Our homeschooling track for them will involve equipping them with all the principles in the ERE book such that both of them can retire no later than 25.
My wife's and my goal is to retire within the next 5 years and devote the rest of our life to research and legal work on behalf of the abused and trafficked.
Pretty much it! Happy to answer any questions that don't involve identifying information. I'm thinking of starting a journal but probably will continue it on my blog, deepfinancejourney.blogspot.com. The first few posts there are super rough because I didn't want to procrastinate for the sake of perfection, but I'm working on a way of doing more substantial regular postings, maybe on a monthly cadence.